A feasibility study helps you and your team foresee potential challenges, prepare for risks, and weigh the benefits of a project. A high-quality feasibility study can prevent problems and help your organization reduce the likelihood (and impact of) bad project planning.
Project managers benefit from feasibility studies but so does the rest of the team. During implementation, the feasibility study may serve as a reference for mitigating and managing risk.
Using a feasibility study, organizations review recommended projects and determine how likely it is that the project will be completed successfully. This allows management to choose which projects the business will undertake based on the necessary resources, overall project goals, available market information, and other relevant research. To be successful, the project must make sense in light of business objectives and potential return on investment.
As part of the research and analysis to determine a project’s value and viability, feasibility studies are conducted before project implementation. If your feasibility study is planned and designed well, it will thoroughly investigate any risks that are possible outcomes of your project.
After your feasibility study, you can confidently implement a project plan knowing that you’ve fully accounted for potential issues and that your plan is aligned with your goals. If the feasibility study doesn’t result in a positive outcome for the project, then your team may need to reconsider basic assumptions of your project plan or revisit your business objectives.
A feasibility study follows a set process with seven steps guiding research and analysis. Ultimately, the project ends with a decision for or against completing the project.
Feasibility studies are structured in such a way as to systematically address various aspects of your project and your organization’s capabilities, such as technical, operational, and financial resources and risks associated with your project.
A feasibility study can cover many different areas or can be limited to a single topic. For instance, you can develop a feasibility study that includes scheduling, operational, and budgetary analysis. Not every project needs every type of feasibility study, but you should be as thorough as possible in your analysis, since feasibility studies protect your team and your project.
By taking a close look at your technical capabilities, you can ensure your organization’s existing resources are enough to meet your project’s needs. Your team should be able to bring your project’s core ideas to fruition. If not, then this part of the feasibility study may uncover a need for greater technical resources or may mean your organization should reconsider the overall project.
Areas to consider include:
Moving forward, your technical feasibility planning can help you with other areas of your study, such as labor budgeting.
Every project should have a sufficient budget in order to stay feasible. Funding your project means making sure your project is economically viable. A cost/benefit analysis can bring the full value of your project directly into view.
A budget feasibility analysis can use techniques such as:
These numbers aren’t final, but they should give you a good idea of what to expect during implementation and whether or not your project’s budget is sufficient.
With most projects, legal issues are an important consideration. Staying in compliance should be a key emphasis throughout your project. Otherwise, legal requirement conflicts could jeopardize your plans.
Here are a few general areas legal feasibility considers:
Your legal feasibility assessment determines how to proceed with the project while adhering fully to legal requirements.
Risks can be an inherent part of doing business, but uncovering risk and looking for opportunities to address it can enable your team to improve your likelihood of success.
Approach risk in your feasibility report with these possible reactions in mind:
Based on your risk assessment within your feasibility study, your team can develop a risk management plan that appropriately addresses risks.
For this portion of a feasibility study, your team determines whether or not the project meets operational requirements. Does the project meet business needs? To answer this question, you should carefully review the project’s impact on operations:
Based on your findings, your team can address operational impact that could be negative and can explore how positive impact could benefit the organization.
Time reflects the scheduling, timing, and start and end of the project in relation to your organization’s other projects and activities. Like other resources, time is finite and must be carefully managed.
Once you have a thorough understanding of how timing and scheduling impact your project and stakeholders, you can determine if your project plan scheduling requirements need adjustment.
Interested in collaborating with team members on your next feasibility study? Or just want a collaborative space to share your findings? Try Lucidspark.
Lucidspark, a cloud-based virtual whiteboard, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This cutting-edge digital canvas brings teams together to brainstorm, collaborate, and consolidate collective thinking into actionable next steps—all in real time. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidspark.com.
