Best Practices in Assessment of Research and Development Organizations (2012) / Chapter Skim
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Other resources include its budget, facilities, and capital equipment. Consideration of the alignment of the organization's mission and the relevance and impact of its work requires assessing the relationship that the laboratory and its parent have with their customers and stakeholders.
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Assessing ongoing research, the most common subject of assessments, includes reviewing and evaluating the technical projects and considering the quality of the research staff and management, the facilities, and the capital equipment. An effective assessment compares the program to the parent's mission and vision.
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Academic research focuses on generating new knowledge with relatively few mission objectives, whereas government and industrial research organizations have fairly clearly defined missions. Any effective management assessment also recognizes externally imposed limitations, including but not limited to regulatory and budgetary restrictions.
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It may be a continuing process that includes formal oversight from stakeholders as well as outside reviewers and consultants. Industrial organizations may rely heavily on metrics involving financial return, whereas government organizations may focus more on delivering needed value to stakeholders consistent with mission statements.
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Organizational Leadership and Management An effective management structure will be consistent with the nature of the work. Basic research typically requires a very flat management structure, significant individual freedom in selection of research directions, and a management very receptive to suggestions (although projects involving very large experimental resources such as accelerators may require more structure)
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Before the assessment is carried out, it is important that the panel's members receive briefing materials covering the background of the organization, including some history, a discussion of the parent organization, a number of quantitative measures (metrics) that the organization's management maintains, and any special charges to the assessors from the organization's management.
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It is essential that the organization provide anecdotes of successful work by, for example, citing significant scientific advances (well-cited papers, awards, or other recognition) , or, if appropriate, new products in the marketplace, new processes for producing the products, or new software in use by the technical communities.
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The report summarizing the findings of the assessment makes the case in economic terms for an ROI that by itself could justify funding the research, while recognizing that societal impacts are far more difficult to measure and are not readily quantifiable.7 Companies, or even laboratories themselves, may commission histories. Sometimes a popular book describes developments in technical organization; examples are developments in the Bell Laboratories 8 or the General Electric laboratories.9 Occasionally the history of an 5 Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDRE)
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Does management regularly assess facilities and equipment for adequacy? Does it have a fiscal plan for updating or replacing laboratory equipment?
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Assessing the Quality of Scientific and Technical Work Answers to the following questions will be useful in the assessment of the quality of an organization's technical work: Does the assessment include the quality of the staff, equipment, and facilities? Does the assessment include the nature of the research portfolio as to alignment with the mission and the balance in regard to basic, applied, and development work and short-, intermediate, and long-term research?
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