TRL assessment in EBRAINS Ready

A Technology Readiness Level (TRL, 1–9) says how mature a service is, from an idea being worked out (1) to a system proven in everyday use (9). EBRAINS Ready decides it from evidence, against a published checklist.

How a level is decided

  1. Evidence is collected automatically from the systems the service already uses: its code repository, container registry, uptime monitoring, analytics, identity provider and the EBRAINS Knowledge Graph. Hardware platforms answer a questionnaire instead, and a few entry-level facts (what the service is, who runs it) are declared by its owner.
  2. The evidence is checked against the checklist for the service’s kind: software, service, platform or hardware. See Checklists.
  3. The level is the highest one whose conditions all hold, climbed in order. One unmet condition stops the climb; there is no averaging and no partial credit.

Two limits apply everywhere:

  • If the code cannot be reached, the level stops at what the deployment alone proves.
  • Real users are required at the top. TRL 8 and 9 have usage conditions; engineering quality alone does not reach them.

The official number

The TRL Ready publishes for a service is the result of the checklist under the EBRAINS default rubric (currently x4); its badge reads EBRAINS TRL. It is reproducible: every evaluation records the evidence it used and the rubric version that judged it.

Two other readings may appear next to it, always labelled:

  • AI assessment (where enabled): an independent estimate with a rationale and an action plan. The AI does not see the checklist result, and it never changes the published level.
  • An organisation’s own rubric: organisations can assess their catalogue against a rubric of their own in Ready. Those results are shown as such, and their badge reads just TRL; they are not the EBRAINS default.

Corrections and conditions that don’t apply

  • Service owners cannot edit collected evidence; they can declare the answers only they can give (who the service is for, for example), shown as declared. When collected evidence is wrong, ask the EBRAINS Ready team to correct it; a corrected value is always labelled as entered by hand.
  • A condition that cannot apply to a service can be marked not applicable; it then drops out of the level instead of failing it.
  • Some conditions are waived for everyone until EBRAINS can check them (for example, SLA conditions while there is no SLA programme). Waived conditions are always shown as waived.

Moving up a level

Open your service in Ready: its checklist shows each condition, whether it is met, and the evidence it read. The first unmet condition is the next thing to work on; see How to move up a level.

Using EBRAINS Ready

The methodology

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