Assessing benefits and impact creation in IST research projects

This paper describes novel methodologies for assessing benefits and impact creation in IST related research projects. The paper first includes a Verification & Validation (V&V) method developed for evaluating of Future Internet software components implementation in a multi-sectorial environment. The proposed approach is based on best of breed V&V methodologies characterized by a structured assessment of the software quality at different levels and a reduced set of business indicators able to evaluate the business impact of the integrated solution. All of these are deployed via a configurable V&V Package based on a web interface. Second it includes a methodology for maximising post project impact creating through activity monitoring. The method used is based on impact waves and success tree approaches. Examples are given of practical implementation in the EU FP7, FI-PPP Project FITMAN. At the end of the paper the practical experiences and lessons learned from our work are also described.