Evaluating Technology Readiness

by Mike Mitchell

How do you know when a good idea will be ready to be sold to the public? How important is an early release, and how much is the development costing? Moving technology from the Research community to the Development community, and from the first beta prototype to widespread use use is a challenging endeavor. There a number of transition points in this handoff from one organization to another, to another, to another – all part of disciplined development and production of systems within the product development stream that ready the item for operational use and sent to the customer as soon as possible. The basic definition of transition, then is “movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another” and “the act of passing from one state or place to the next.” In military product development terms, this change from one “position, stage or place” to another is usually seen in one of two contexts. The first is when technology moves out of the Science and Technology realm and into the product development realm. The other is fielding the integrated product for use by a consumer or user of that technology.The best system for evaluating technology in development is called the SPRG – the System Prioritization & Ranking Grid. SPRG is effective not only in assessing readiness, but also in helping gain investor support for product development. The three primary parts of the Grid are as assessment of the Technology Readiness based on documented achievements, the Operational (usefulness) Value, the Time to Market Assessment and the expected Return on Investment. The scores for each assessment are adjusted based on relative weights and added. The scores are compared, and then judgment is applied to choose which option is most viable to pursue.This book describes the component parts of the SPRG and how each can be used to create the best product for the intended marketplace by evaluating whether the technology is ready for test or release, and revealing what else needs to be done to make it a successful technology development.

40 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 29, 2012

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