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A murder board, also known as a "scrub-down", is a committee of questioners set up to critically review a proposal and/or help someone prepare for a difficult oral examination.
The term originated in the U.S. military, specifically from the Pentagon, but is also used in academic and government appointment contexts. NASA contends the murder board was created by Hans Mark, Director of Ames Research Center from 1969 to 1977, derived from the earlier concept of the tiger team.
In highly risk-averse, technical endeavors where extreme efforts are taken to prevent mistakes , murder boards are used to aggressively review, without constraint or pleasantries, a situation's problem, assumptions, constraints, mitigations, and the proposed solution. The board's goal is to kill the well-prepared proposal on technical merit; holding back even the least suspicion of a problem is not tolerated. Such argumentative murder boards consist of many subject matter experts of the specific system under review and of all interfacing systems.
In project management, a murder board is a process where a committee asks questions from project representatives as part of the project selection process.