research-assessment

Research Assessment

Systematically evaluate research artifacts to determine production readiness.

When to Use

• Evaluating a POC before committing to production build
• Assessing what an experiment actually proved vs assumed
• Identifying gaps between prototype and production requirements
• Creating readiness checklists for stakeholder review
• Analyzing ADRs for implementation implications

Core Framework: "What Did We Prove?"

Before planning production work, separate fact from assumption:

Validated (Evidence Exists)

Claims with concrete evidence:

• Test results that passed
• Benchmarks with data
• User feedback collected
• Integration confirmed working

Assumed (No Direct Test)

Claims we believe but haven't verified:

• "It should scale" (but no load test)
• "Users will want this" (but no validation)
• "Security is fine" (but no audit)

Unknown (Gap)

Things we don't know:

• Untested edge cases
• Unexplored failure modes
• Missing requirements

Production Readiness Checklist

Score each criterion 1-10:

Scoring Guide:

• 8-10: Production-ready with minor polish
• 6-7: Needs targeted work in specific areas
• 4-5: Significant gaps requiring substantial effort
• 1-3: Research phase, not ready for production planning

Gap Analysis Matrix

Use this template to map what's proven vs unknown:

Red Flags Checklist

Watch for these patterns that indicate low readiness:

• Happy path only - no error handling
• Hardcoded values that need configuration
• "TODO" comments for critical functionality
• No tests or only manual testing
• Single contributor (bus factor = 1)
• Missing logging/monitoring hooks
• No documentation of design decisions
• Untested third-party dependencies
• Security considerations deferred
• No rollback or recovery plan

Output Template

# Research Assessment: [Project Name]

## Executive Summary
[2-3 sentences: what this is, key finding, readiness score]

## What Did We Prove?

### Validated Hypotheses
- **[Hypothesis]**: [Evidence] (Confidence: High/Medium/Low)

### Key Findings
1. [Finding with evidence]

## Production Readiness: X/10

| Criterion | Score | Notes |
|-----------|-------|-------|
| Core hypothesis | X | |
| Performance | X | |
| Security | X | |
| Scalability | X | |
| Error handling | X | |
| Observability | X | |
| Documentation | X | |
| Knowledge transfer | X | |

## Gap Analysis

| Domain | Proven | Assumed | Unknown |
|--------|--------|---------|---------|
| ... | ... | ... | ... |

## Risks & Technical Debt
- [Item with severity]

## Recommended Next Steps
1. [Action]

Progressive Validation Ramp

Before investing in production readiness, projects must pass increasingly rigorous gates. Apply the "80% of experiments should fail" philosophy:

See references/graduation-criteria.md for detailed gate requirements.

References

See references/ for:

• readiness-criteria.md - Detailed scoring rubrics
• common-gaps.md - Typical gaps by project type
• graduation-criteria.md - Gate criteria and kill decisions (GitHub Next patterns)
• rfc-templates.md - Google, Uber, Sourcegraph RFC formats

See examples/ for:

• poc-assessment-example.md - Vector Search POC with full "What Did We Prove?" framework
• gate-review-example.md - Internal Build → Private Preview graduation checklist