Technology Readiness Assessment Guide: Best Practices for Evaluating the Readiness of Technology for Use in Acquisition Programs and Projects

Technology readiness assessments (TRA), evaluations that determine a technology’s maturity, have been used widely at the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) since the 1990s. This approach has also been embraced by other government agencies, as well as industry in aerospace, maritime, oil and gas, electronics, and heavy equipment that use TRAs to help manage their acquisitions. Relatively few agencies have guides for assessing a technology’s maturity and its readiness for integration into larger acquisition programs, and the federal government has not adopted a generally accepted approach for evaluating technology beyond using technology readiness level (TRL) measures. This TRA Guide is intended to help fill those gaps.