Rubric version 1
Seven criteria, fixed weights, no overall star
The seven criteria every product on this site is scored against, at fixed published weights, applied identically to every product.
The weighting
The bars below are the scale itself, drawn empty. On a product page each one is filled to the score, and its length never changes: a criterion worth 20 is always twice the length of one worth 10, so the weighting is visible on every card without a legend.
- 20 of 100
Modeling capability
How much of a real process the model can represent: routing, resources and shifts, queueing, batching, statistical distributions and control logic.
- 20 of 100
Ease of learning
How long it takes to reach a first useful model. Onboarding, templates, and how much scripting the product makes unavoidable.
- 20 of 100
Results, analysis and experimentation
Depth of reporting, bottleneck analysis, scenario comparison, repeated runs, and structured experiments.
- 15 of 100
Pricing transparency and total cost
Whether a price is published at all, what training, renewal and hosting add to it, and what the free tier really allows.
- 10 of 100
Visualization and stakeholder communication
How well a finished run persuades somebody who did not build the model. A three dimensional view is one route to that, and not the only one: an animated run, a heatmap showing when a queue builds, or a chart ranking every step by what it costs can each do the same job at a fraction of the effort to produce.
- 10 of 100
Platform and deployment
Which operating systems are supported, whether it runs in a browser, and how teams share and govern work.
- 5 of 100
Learning resources and support
Documentation, training, an active community, and academic access.
Why the scores are published as a breakdown
A single number is the one thing a reader who weights the criteria differently cannot use. A buyer replacing a spreadsheet and a buyer modeling a hospital want different products, and collapsing seven findings into one figure throws away exactly the information that tells them apart. So the breakdown is the finding. The weighted total is recorded on the index for anyone who wants to sort by it, and it is never the headline of a review.
Why visualization is in the rubric
Criterion 5 covers three dimensional views and animation. Some products in this category have them and others do not, so it is a row that separates the field rather than one everybody passes. A rubric that quietly left out a criterion would be built around a preferred answer, and a reader who noticed would be right to discount every other score on the site. It stays, at a weight that reflects how much it actually matters to a buyer rather than how impressive it looks in a demonstration.
Why the weights do not move
The weights are a published commitment. Changing one quietly would make two assessments written months apart incomparable, which is the exact failure a published rubric exists to prevent. A change means a new version number and a note saying what moved and why, and every product carries the version it was scored under.
What a score is, and what it is not
Each criterion is scored out of its own weight, from published vendor documentation and product material, with the date each source was read. A score is a reading of what the published material establishes. It is not a measurement of the product in use: we do not claim hands on testing, and no page on this site is written as though we had.The method is set out in full.
The same rubric, published twice
This rubric is also published by ProcessMgr, which puts out this title. The two documents carry the same criteria at the same weights. If they ever disagree, one of them is wrong, and we would want to be told.