Based on the evaluation results, decide what to do next. This decision will

108 CHAPTER 4 The Design Process and Product Discovery Table 4.2 The portfolio scoring by BURL Alternatives Upgrade road Front suspension for bike Tandem mountain bike Criteria Agreement Certainty Agreement Certainty Agreement Certainty Acceptable program complexity complexity SA C N C D VU Clear market need N VC D U SA VC Acceptable competitive intensity A C A N N N Acceptable five-year cash flow D C D C A C Reasonable payback time N C D U A U Acceptable start-up time A VC A VC N C Good company fit A C D C N C Strong proprietary position SD C SA C A C Good platform for growth D C A U A C “acceptable five-year cash flow” and “reasonable payback time” are most important, and marketing wants to see “Good company fit.” Engineering wants a “Strong proprietary position” and a “Good platform for growth.” For now, we will assume they are all equally important and address this activity further in Chap. 8. Activity 5. BURL evaluates the alternatives relative to the criterion. These eval- uations can range from qualitative assessments to the results of analytical simu- lations. For now, we will work with the qualitative statements made in the SWOT analysis and use a very simplified method to evaluate and decide what to do next. This will be refined as the product matures and more numerical analyses and simulation become possible. To support this evaluation BURL used a Decision Matrix, a table with the alternatives in columns and the criteria in rows Table 4.2. The cells of the matrix contain the evaluation results. For this qualitative assessment, BURL evaluated each alternative relative to each criterion using two measures. The first is how well the alternative meets the criterion in terms of level of agreement with the statement “I X that the alternative has criterion” where X equals ■ Strongly agree SA ■ Agree A ■ Neutral N ■ Disagree D ■ Strongly disagree SD For example “I disagree that the Introduce tandem has clear market need.” Further, a second score will also be used, the level of certainty with which the evaluation is made. This is in terms of ■ Very certain VC ■ Certain C