The foregoing methods seem to be accepted as effective strategies within the literature, but their effectiveness in the R&D context has remained elusive. The literature review reveals the lack of research on these methods for R&D projects. Even the authors of the available case studies have noted that result generalisation becomes tenable only after the process has been replicated in other contexts and for more cases (Segismundo & Miguel, 2008).
To address this paucity of research, this paper focuses on extending the research undertaken by Mastroianni (2011) in two ways. Firstly, it applies the RFMEA technique to South Australian R&D and NPD case study projects to determine if it offers improvements in identifying critical project risks over other techniques. Secondly, it applies the RFMEA technique to project risks after their contingency plans have been put into action, thus assessing whether the RFMEA technique also identifies effective risk contingency plans.