A practical R&D project-selection scoring tool

An improved scoring tool for research and development (R&D) project evaluation and selection is presented that ranks project alternatives based on the criteria of relevance, risk, reasonableness, and return. The scoring algorithm explicitly incorporates tradeoffs among the evaluation criteria and calculates a relative measure of project value by taking into account the fact that value is a function of both merit and cost. Implementation of the selection method in a federal research laboratory is discussed. A comprehensive overview of the R&D project selection literature is included.