Project Market Readiness Index
| Introduction | Overview | Best Practices | Project Attributes | Market Readiness | |
Objective
The objective is to assess open source projects from a market perspective and provide a simple indicator of the market readiness of OW2 projects.
Scope
The OW2 MRL are a series of business-related situations that reflect the evolution of a project from initial software development to market leadership. The sequence must take into consideration the changes that must occur for a project to transform itself from a purely technology endeavour to a market powerhouse. And because we replicate the NASA TRL scale, the OW2 MRL scale also has nine levels.
The MRL score positions the project on the OW2 Market Readiness scale. Theoretically the score is a number between 0 and 10, however the scale has nine grades, a software reaches MRL 9 when it is technically mature and broadly used, supported and recognised on the market. Because software is a technical product, the MRL scale is influenced by technical determinations however they should be understood from a market point of view as if confronted to the question: what value is brought to a business user?
| OW2 MRL | MRL Rationale | Market Rationale | Examples | Technology Rationale | (NASA TRL) |
| 9 | Market Leader | Significant market share and global customer base. Properly financed and organized business support. Global active community. | Platform, Sub-Project Generation | “Flight Proven” | |
| 8 | Established Outsider | Customer base of mainstream users. Appropriate financing. Active community support and contributions. Recognized software | FusionDirectory, XWiki, KnowAge, OW2 Proactive, | Building Range (Products/Features) | “Flight Qualified” |
| 7 | Established Business | Established product. Customer base of early and mainstream users. Stable financing. Open to community support and contributions. | DocDokuPLM, Imixs Workflow, LemonLDAP::NG, Rocket.Chat | Full Q&A | “Prototype in Space” |
| 6 | Sizable Adoption or Market | Proven product. Customer base of early users. Project fit for third party contributions. Implicit community governance | ASM,Authzforce, Joram, Sat4J, Spoon, Sympa | Growing Interoperability | “Proven Demo” |
| 5 | Fair Adoption or Market | Some customers, recent market opening, Core team of developers, untested open source governance | Lutece | User Interface Maturing | “Relevant Envt Validation” |
| 4 | Usefulness Verified | Several users, project leadership well established | CLIF, SeedStack, ReachOut | MVP Defined | “Lab Validation” |
| 3 | Fledgeling Usefulness | One declared user (can be internal) with declared project leader | PItest | Golden Scenario | “Proof of Concept” |
| 2 | Development | Basic R&D code developed with one demonstrated use case, some documentation | CHOReVOLUTION | POC | “Application Formulation” |
| 1 | Research | Basic R&D code developed | DSpot | Methodology & Algorithms | “Basic Principles” |
Data Collection
Information is collected via a structured interview with the project leaders and recorded in a form. Questions are not boolean and the form is only here to record the project market situation in the given category. Follow this link for a full list of market situations verified by the methodology and an exemple of the data collection form.
Computation
The market capabilities are combined with the project attributes to provide the Market Readiness Level (MRL) score. The MRL score is the computed average of 12 values: seven Capabilities values and five Attribute values.
| Market Capabilities | Project Attributes | ||
| Product | Activity | | |
| Community | Community | ||
| Support | Compliance | ||
| Customers | Quality | ||
| Sales | Sustainability | ||
| Finances | |||
| Recognition |
Results
The result is simply a number between 0 and 9. That's the whole point of all these efforts! The MRL is published in the shape of a cursor positioned along a single vertical bar.
Stage 3: Market capabilities < Previous