Core Concept – A critical evaluation of the technical fitness of an organisation, department or system. Often the prelude to an investment decision.
- Evaluation – Evaluators must be objective. Will candidly report their finding and produce an assessment of benefits and risks.
- Investigation – Data collection from interviews, internal reports, product reviews, industry surveys, analyst reports, patents, company accounts, etc.
- Environment – Hardware, software and networks. Investigate its history and plans for orderly change amidst the flux. Are there the right tools to execute the product and service strategies?
- Awareness – of emerging technologies, competitors, potential threats
- Improvement – Budgets for product, staff development. History and success of past roll-outs.
- Infrastructure – Good corporate IT? Organisation has well-defined boundaries of responsibility?
- Uniqueness – Differences to competitors. Which trade-offs have been made (e.g. pick 2 of Good/Fast/Cheap). What IP rights are held?
- R&D – Is there research capability for incremental improvements or breakthroughs? What is development capability, quality of builds and response to bugs?
- Operations – Are operations efficient? Any scope for savings?
- Personnel – Quality of engineers and management. Who are the key people and how committed are they?
- Direction – Where is technology now, where is it going?
- Benefit-risk – Anticipated pay-offs versus the manageable risks. A continuum of low/low to high/high
