Ebook: Finding Candidate Options for Investment : From Building Blocks to Composite Options and Preliminary Screening

This report describes and documents a methodology and a prototype tool, the Building Blocks To Composite Options Tool (BCOT), for identifying investment options suitable to a particular defense capability area. The report is intended primarily for users of BCOT and those who will extend its functionality in the future, i.e., working analysts and modelers. The methodology ensures that a broad range of investment options is considered initially. It then uses a screening technique to narrow the range to those deemed worthy of more-extensive assessment in a fuller portfolio-analysis framework, such as an assessment using RAND's Portfolio Analysis Tool (PAT). The methodology draws upon some classic techniques from economics and operations research but extends them significantly and suggests pragmatic approximations in applications, particularly in capabilities-based planning. BCOT has been implemented in both Analytica¨ and Microsoft Excel.¨ However, it is a prototype, not a finished product. Much work is needed to fully develop exploratory-analysis techniques needed to assure robustness of results. The most important next step is to hone the exploratory-analysis concepts with a relatively complex application that includes many uncertainties about relative emphasis of scenarios and assumptions to be made in estimating effectiveness.