Most of the time when we come up with an idea or requirement, we try to gather the requirement before analyzing that idea on certain feasibility parameters. What if the technology required to develop that idea is not developed or our team does not have such a capability?
There might be a case the team can learn that new technology but the time consumed in acquiring and being adept with the new technology is bound to affect the schedule.
Before digging into the actual development or requirement analysis, we need to evaluate the idea on a different scale, such as technical, economical, operational and committed schedules. The feasibility study is important for every project in order to ensure success and to avoid failure.
Type of Feasibility study:
A feasibility study is required to be done at the start of any project. There are many different types of feasibility study depending on the different domains and sectors. Here are a few common types of feasibility studies that are common irrespective of domains and sectors.
1. Technical feasibility :
Evaluate your team for the tech-stack required to build the idea. Try to find the best resources on the required technology. We cannot proceed with a novice developer to implement critical ideas under any project. We need to involve or hire experts in such cases. As a Business Analyst, we need to analyze the possibility of technical feasibility prior to picking that idea. In most cases, if we need to proceed with the current team then we should change the flow, or solution in such a way that the desired outcome can be achieved using the existing team within the scheduled time.
Alternatively, we should plan our requirement and development schedule based on the priority so that the hiring team gets ample time to hire new talent and also the current technical team gets proper time to get trained over the required tech stack.
2. Economical feasibility:
Every project should be defined within a certain budget or a proposed budget, which requires conducting cost/benefit analysis to be done before-hand. This analysis will help the organization take the required decision in terms of the expenses involved in that particular project. Accordingly, Project managers can take an informed decision on team size, timeline, etc. If we have performed such analysis at the beginning of the project then management can take an independent decision to mitigate such risk.
3. Scheduling feasibility:
This is important to analyze the schedule of the project in the era of Agility. As with the time, ideas are available in abundance and the competition is increasing exponentially with every fraction of time.
Binding project in such a scheduled timeline to benefit the organization and team is quite important. A defined schedule can help everyone in the team to achieve their goal in an effective manner, also a fixed schedule project helps in overall cost saving.
4. Legal feasibility:
It is imperative to check the legality of any and every idea while developing new ones. Most of the time if we are picking any copyrighted or patented idea/element or intellectual property in our project, then that can ruin all our efforts vested in the developed outcome. Especially in development if we pick any paid or third party library without any proper consent or license then that can cause a big impact on schedule and cost.
Advantages of Feasibility study:
There are certain important advantages of the feasibility study as listed below:
- Helps us to evaluate the team capability
- It helps us to analyze what can benefit the project/client.
- It helps management to take an informed decision.
- Helps to support the hiring team
- Helps to take a decision to go/no-go
- Identify the reason for not picking any requirement
- It helps to get cost/benefit analysis.
Conclusion:
With every requirement, while proposing or heading into development it is important to analyze the feasibility first and foremost. Once the feasibility of the requirement is sorted, we further proceed and incorporate the same in the solution. We should always try not to propose any solution or flow that is not good enough on the feasibility scale.
Author — Ram Bahadur Singh, DLT Labs™
About the Author: Ram Bahadur Singh is a BA Manager at DLT Labs with extensive experience in various domains including security, e-commerce, and e-learning. He is involved in the business requirement analysis and is focused to provide the best user-experience to the end customers in the designed product.
