While the smart city gains global attention as a popular umbrella term for digitally enabled sustainable city development, city administrations are faced with the managerial challenge that comes with a strategic digital transformation. Smart city projects form the frontline of smart city strategies. In these smart projects, cities find a way to implement the principles of the smart city. Many of these are high-visibility projects with substantial budget implications, and therefore require scrutiny by means of a formal selection and evaluation process. In this research-in-progress paper we propose the outline for a project-level smart value assessment instrument. The instrument should serve at the same time as a tool for smart city managers to assess and plan upfront how a project will contribute to reach the city's smart city ambition, as well as a post factum evaluation. The conceptual instrument has been developed in action-design research mode in collaboration with practitioners in the city of Brisbane, Australia and is demonstrated by mapping four smart city initiatives in different international contexts.