The technology readiness level (TRL) scale was developed at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the 1970s as a standardized technology maturity assessment tool for use in complex system development. Today, TRL assessments are used to make multimillion‐dollar decisions at NASA and beyond, yet anecdotal evidence suggests that there are challenges associated with TRL use in practice. In this paper, we systematically uncover the practitioners' view, first via 19 interviews with employees from seven organizations. We identify 15 challenges of TRL implementations in three categories: system complexity, planning and review, and validity of assessment. Next, we prioritize these challenges via a survey of TRL practitioners, using a best‐worst choice experiment. Finally, we identify best practices and proposed extensions to address the challenges. We find that system complexity challenges are most critical to TRL users, despite being addressed in the literature. We posit that addressing these opportunities could result in substantial improvements to decision processes and outcomes in complex engineering projects.

中文翻译：

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技术准备水平：缺点和改进机会

技术准备水平（TRL）规模是由美国国家航空航天局（NASA）于1970年代开发的，它是用于复杂系统开发的标准化技术成熟度评估工具。如今，TRL评估已被用于在NASA以及其他地区做出数百万美元的决策，但轶事证据表明，实践中使用TRL带来了挑战。在本文中，我们首先通过对七个组织的员工进行的19次访谈，系统地揭示了从业者的观点。我们在以下三个类别中确定了TRL实施的15个挑战：系统复杂性，计划和审查以及评估的有效性。接下来，我们使用最差的选择实验，通过对TRL从业者的调查来确定这些挑战的优先级。最后，我们确定了最佳做法，并提出了应对挑战的扩展方案。我们发现，尽管文献中已经解决了系统复杂性挑战，但对TRL用户而言却是最关键的挑战。我们认为解决这些机会可能会大大改善复杂工程项目中的决策流程和结果。