Projects fail to achieve their time, budget, and quality goals. This is frequently due to the failure to analyze and assess unanticipated risks in the context of the life cycle of the project. There is a need for an approach (tool/method) that can be used to analyze and assess a project's future risks during the life cycle of the project and to overcome the traditional approaches currently used for future evaluation. The approach must take into consideration the context of the life cycle of the project, i.e., the definition of the system requirements, functional analysis and allocation, feasible alternatives, etc. The objective of this paper is to introduce a new approach (tool/method) for product evaluation through the use of the multi-criteria decision analysis methodology, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP is a relatively new approach that can be used to analyze and assess projects during the planning and evaluation stages. / Master of Science