Feasibility Study

FEASIBILITY STUDY

In simple terms, a feasibility study involves taking a judgment call on whether a project is within your capabilities (doable). A feasibility study evaluates the project's potential for success.

The two criteria to judge feasibility are cost required and value to be delivered. A well-designed study should offer a historical background of the business or project, a description of the product or service, accounting statements, details of operations and management, marketing research and policies, financial data, legal requirements and tax obligations. Generally, such studies precede technical development and project implementation.

1.       Technical Feasibility - assessment is centred on the technical resources available to the organization. It helps organizations asses if the technical resources meet capacity and whether the technical team is capable of converting the ideas into working systems. Technical feasibility also involves evaluation of the hardware and the software requirements of the proposed system.

2.       Economic Feasibility - helps organizations assess the viability, cost, and benefits associated with projects before financial resources are allocated. It also serves as an independent project assessment, and enhances project credibility, as a result. This assessment typically involves a cost/ benefits analysis of the project.

3.       Legal Feasibility - investigates if the proposed system conflicts with legal requirements like data protection acts or social media laws.

4.       Operational Feasibility - this involves undertaking a study to analyze and determine whether your business needs can be fulfilled by using the proposed solution. It also measures how well the proposed system solves problems and takes advantage of the opportunities identified during scope definition.

These include such design-dependent parameters such as reliability, maintainability, supportability, usability, disposability, sustainability, affordability, and others.

5.       Scheduling Feasibility is the most important for project success. A project will fail if not completed on time. In scheduling feasibility, we estimate how much time the system will take to complete, and with our technical skills we need to estimate the period to complete the project using various methods of estimation.

Conducting a feasibility study is always beneficial to the project as it gives you and other stakeholders a clear picture of your idea.

Below are the key benefits of conducting a feasibility study:

·         Gives project teams more focus and provides an alternative outline.

·         Narrows the business alternatives.

·         Identifies a valid reason to undertake the project.

·         Enhances the success rate by evaluating multiple parameters.

·         Aids decision-making on the project.

BCS/Dip/SE1/ Waterfall Model

Waterfall Model

The waterfall model is a popular version of the systems development life cycle model for software engineering. Often considered the classic approach to the systems development life cycle, the waterfall model describes a development method that is linear and sequential. Waterfall development has distinct goals for each phase of development. Imagine a waterfall on the cliff of a steep mountain. Once the water has flowed over the edge of the cliff and has begun its journey down the side of the mountain, it cannot turn back. It is the same with waterfall development. Once a phase of development is completed, the development proceeds to the next phase and there is no turning back.

Advantages

• Simple and easy to understand and use
• Easy to manage due to the rigidity of the model . 
• each phase has specific deliverable and a review process.
• Phases are processed and completed one at time.
• Works well for smaller projects where requirements are very well understood.