How to Run a Research Programme Health Check

Score your programme on five statements: more than 70% of studies have a named decision they inform; a new person could find all past research on a topic in under five minutes; more than 60% of completed studies had a documented decision; you can name three cross-study patterns from your body of work; if the most senior researcher left, less than 20% of knowledge would be inaccessible.

What to Assess

1. Evidence quality.

Checkpoint: Of the last ten studies, how many had a complete brief?

2. Evidence accessibility.

Checkpoint: Ask someone outside the team to find all studies on a topic. Time them.

3. Decision influence.

Checkpoint: Produce a list of decisions informed by research in the last six months.

4. Knowledge durability.

Checkpoint: Name every aspect only one person understands.

5. Strategic alignment.

Checkpoint: For each active study, which business objective does it serve?

Scoring

Checkpoint: Does "infrastructure gap" appear as a root cause more than once?

What Good Looks Like

If the health check itself was difficult to complete because the data was not available, that is the clearest finding of all.