Controlling new product development (NPD) projects is a fundamental concern for companies, executives and research and development managers (Chiesa and Masella, 1996; Bonner et al., 2002; Chiesa et al., 2009; Zhu and Chen, 2016), and the selection of the “right” formal controls is considered a crucial managerial task (Henttonen et al., 2016). Facing turbulent dynamics in competitive areas, shortened life cycles, globalisation, reduced time to market, and increased NPD costs and risks (Chiesa et al., 2009), firms increasingly have to balance flexibility and control related to their performance measure use (Henri, 2006). Thus, one goal in controlling NPD projects is to avoid unpleasant surprises in order to assure that the NPD project is on track and delivers new products that meet customer needs (Bonner et al., 2002). Another goal is to ensure that formal controls do not interfere with the necessity that NPD teams are innovative and creative, and adapt quickly to new developments in the NPD project (Henri, 2006). Furthermore, previous literature has argued that adaptability affects firm performance (e.g. Thongpapanl et al., 2012) and that team adaptability is key for project success (e.g. Klarner et al., 2013), yet we have little empirical evidence on how formal controls affect team adaptability in NPD projects. Despite the emerging notion that formal controls will affect NPD success (e.g. Rijsdijk and Van den Ende, 2011; Chong and Mahama, 2014; Henttonen et al., 2016), it is insufficiently clear to which extent formal controls and team adaptability jointly affect NPD project success. To address this gap, we investigate the relationship between formal controls, team adaptability and project success for two key performance measures in NPD projects: cost and resource allocation (Henttonen et al., 2016). Cost and resource allocation decisions are amongst the most important decisions in every NPD project, and firms usually provide specific targets in these areas (Davila, 2000; Thamhain, 2003). We focus on the use of two specific formal controls that are argued to help achieve a balance between predictable goal achievement and creative innovation: target rigidity (an output control) that provides direction for project execution and can be used to monitor progress, and process autonomy (a behaviour control) that provides autonomy to adapt project activities to new developments in the NPD project. We argue that these controls provide the motivation (output controls) and discretion (behaviour controls) for the team to adapt to new developments in the NPD project, which subsequently affects NPD project success. We empirically test our research model based upon data collected from a survey of 113 NPD project managers. We analyse the effectiveness of target rigidity and process autonomy for resource and cost measures in separate models as project managers may use these measures differently.