different levels of abstraction. A project can be defined as a series of related compounds made in time order with associated measured data for the target of interest and other properties that might pertain to a compounds suitability to become a commercial drug. Compound optimization in drug or agrochemical development is usually analyzed as a time-independent process with the focus on the structure-activity relationships within closely related sets of compounds. It is difficult to obtain the time a compound was added to a project outside of the databases of individual drug companies . Even within large companies the fact that each project is an aggregate of hundreds or thousands of compounds means that their number is relatively limited compared to the number of compounds in their collections. A model of the statistical behavior of projects that goes beyond the available data might be useful.