Agreed. R&D is notoriously hard to estimate and high-risk projects require tight risk management to allow proper progress monitoring. And yes it also depend on

Agreed. R&D is notoriously hard to estimate and high-risk projects require tight risk management to allow proper progress monitoring. And yes it also depend on the organization as most organizations don't even keep records of initial vs actual estimates, making estimation based on historical data hard to impossible. As for projects going over initial budgets, that's a different problem from progress monitoring, though they often go hand in hand.