A few months ago I offered to work on creating a matrix for proposal
complexity, unfortunately  I ran into a bit of a wall as two different
metrics sprung from the effort.  The first was the original thought
related to how complicated is the proposal itself and therefore how long
will it take to develop and how much help will investigators need, a
leading indicator.  The second came up later and was related to
determining staff burden and effectiveness, more of a trailing
indicator.  The two had very different processes as the latter assumes
you have all the information because the proposal is complete and the
former is a best guess at any given time and changes as more data is
collected.  I tried to meet both needs with the information people
provided but I just couldn't get there because we hadn't asked the right
questions initially and as the questions we had were answered more
factors were provided.  I'm going to take another crack at this and
please let me know if you feel the plan is off target.  Here are the
steps in mind right now;

1.  Create a new survey  to collect as complete a list of the complexity
factors as possible (we start with a list of 37 factors thanks to
everyone's input to date)
2.  Identify if the factors are related to complexity for development or
staff burden in the survey
3.  Collect information about conditions that make factors not
applicable in certain cases (ex. "we don't do animal research")
4.  Collect ideas about how to generate the score itself. Do we start
from 0 as was the original plan or start from 100 and lower the score as
more details are provided as someone else suggested (which I think might
be a better idea)
5.  Create another survey based on 1,2,3 and 4
6.  Generate a calculation in an excel format and share it with the list
7.  Create a final survey to collect comments and improvements on
calculation
8.  Release the final calculation in excel format
9.  Go on vacation!

Thanks again for everyone's help.

-Chris

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