Technical review and analysis consists of an initial in-depth review of the product with an evaluation report including recommendations, followed, if necessary, by periodic status reviews with status reports and recommendations for any identified corrective actions.

This service is provided for program managers and executives with substantial technical resopnsibilities. You may have an intractable technical problem, a conflict with your customer or an internal conflict concerning technical direction. You may need help finding the best way to implement a product or to make it work in the face of significant challenges.

This service is also provided to investment bankers, venture capital providers and others planning to invest in technology companies. You will need to exercise due diligence in the technical evaluation of a company's products in order to protect your investment.

The technical review and analysis report consists of an in-depth review of the product with respect to the following topics:

• Design Objectives
  Design objectives consist of both standard objectives which can be applied to virtually any product, and special objectives that are specifically tailored to the needs of a particular application.
  
  
• Standard Objectives
  These consist of the following:
  
  
• Customer Acceptance - This refers to how well a customer receives a product; i.e., what does the product do to enhance the customer's business
  
  
• User Acceptance - This includes human factors engineering considerations
  
  
• Performance - Speed, speed, speed …
  
  
• Flexibility - What design features are necessary to support ease of migration of the product to newer technology as it becomes available?
  
  
• Adaptability - What design features are necessary to support tailoring the product to uses other than the original application?
  
  
• Cost - What design features would reduce the cost of development of the product and use of the product, and what, if any, are the tradeoffs
  
  
• Security - What security features are needed in the product?
  
  
• Objectives tailored to the specific product plan
  This may include such things as geographic dispersion, hierarchical organization and control, etc.
  
  
• Technical Viability
  This is an assessment of the reasonableness of the design from the following perspectives:
  
  
  • Is the approach feasible?
    Can the design be implemented with current technology? How "leading-edge" is it? Are there any potential design risks?
    
    
  • Is the projected development cost realistic?
    Can the product be built in on time and in budget with the team that is in place?
    
    
  • Is there a better way?
    Other design approaches, paradigms, algorithms, etc.
    
    
• Opportunities for Exploitation
  This considers whether the product has any potential for use in ways other than the ones originally intended.
  
  
  • Other uses for the product
    Are there other potential markets, industries or applications that we are aware of to which the product can be applied?
    
    
  • Synergy with other products
    Can the product be combined with other products to produce integrated business solutions?
    
    
• Engineering Process
  This deals with the disciplines being employed for development, maintenance and support of the product.
  
  
  • Baseline Management / Configuration Management
    What mechanisms are in place to perform the four essential tasks of baseline management: configuration identification, configuration control, configuration auditing and status accounting? How well are these mechanisms being applied? Does the approach being used make sense for the scope of the project?
    
    
  • Testing and Quality Assurance
    How thoroughly is the product being tested? What types of problems are receiving the most attention, and are they the right ones? How are problems being identified, tracked and worked off? To what extent does the test approach include stress testing and regression testing? To what extent is the testing automated and what makes the most sense?
    
    
  • Documentation
    How well are the baselines documented? Is the support documentation (user's manuals, etc.) adequate? How is the documentation being maintained?
    
    
  • Customer Support
    What are the nature and extent of the customer support functions, and what makes the most sense?