Feasibility Studies
The feasibility study mainly concentrates on below five mentioned areas below. Among these Economic Feasibility Study is the most important part of the feasibility analysis and the Legal Feasibility Study is less considered feasibility analysis.
Technical Feasibility
Technical feasibility assesses the current resources (such as hardware and software) and technology, which are required to accomplish user requirements in the software within the allocated time and budget. For this, the software development team ascertains whether the current resources and technology can be upgraded or added in the software to accomplish specified user requirement
Technical feasibility performs the following tasks:
• It analyzes the technical skills and capabilities of the software development team member.
• It determines whether the relevant technology is stable and established or not.
• It ascertains that the technology chosen for software development has a large number of users so that they can be consulted when problems arise or improvements are required.
Operational Feasibility
Operational feasibility assesses the extent to which the required software performs a series of steps to solve business problems and user requirements. This feasibility is dependent on human resources (software development team) and involves visualizing whether or not the software will operate after it is developed and be operative once it is installed. It also performs the following tasks:
• It determines whether the problems anticipated in user requirements are of high priority or
• It determines whether the solution suggested by the software development team is acceptable or not.
• It analyzes whether users will adapt to a new software or not.
• It determines whether the organization is satisfied by the alternative solutions proposed by the software development team or not.
Economic Feasibility
Economic feasibility determines whether the required software is capable of generating financial gains for an organization or not. It involves the cost incurred on the software development team, estimated cost of hardware and software, cost of performing feasibility study, and so on. For this, it is essential to consider expenses made on purchases (such as hardware purchase) and activities required to carry out software development. In addition it is necessary to consider the benefits that can be achieved by developing the software.
A software is said to be economically feasible if it focuses on the issues listed below.
• Cost incurred on software development to produce long-term gains for an organization.
• Cost required to conduct full software investigation (such as requirements elicitation and requirements analysÃs).
• Cost of hardware, software, development team and training.
Legal Feasibility
Legal feasibility is an analysis performed to understand if the proposed plan conforms to the legal and ethical requirements. These requirements may involve zoning laws, data protection acts, or social medÃa laws, etc.
For example, your company is planning to open a branch in a new region. According to the studies you recognize that the country does not allow an individual foreigner owning a property Therefore you select the rental option instead of buying.
Scheduling Feasibility (Time Feasibility)
Completing a project on time is very important from an investor’s perspective. Scheduling feasibility is a measure of how reasonable the project duration is. If the project takes longer than estimated, investors will have to bear extra costs.
For example, an investor proposed a hotel construction project to your company. However, he requested that the project will be completed in one year. The project team conducted a feasibility study based on a list of requirements to complete the project on time. After analyzing the legal, technical, economic, scheduling, and operational feasibility studies, you will identify any constraints the proposed project may face. Simply put, a project may face internal and external constraints.
Internal Constraints: Technical, technology and budget are an example of internal project constraints. Financial, marketing are examples of internal corporate constraints.
External Constraints: Laws, regulations, and environments are examples of external constraints.
Advantages of Conducting a Feasibility Study
• Might uncover new ideas and opportunities.
• Provides inputs to improve decision making.
• Helps to prevent the project from risks. Enhances the success rate of the project.
• Lists the reasons to undertake the project.
• Lists the reasons not to undertake the project.
• Helps to define internal and external project constraints. Measures the ability and possibility to complete a project successfully.
• Emphasizes potential problems,
• Helps to develop marketing strategies