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How To Do A Project Feasibility Study For Better Process Planning?

Companies that carry a deep vision are sure to succeed. Take a new product launch or dive into a new market, you need some level of risk-taking and testing to get the desired growth. It can also mean handling those projects that you exactly do not know how it will come into life and if at all it can give benefits to the business.

There are business leaders in the market who gained success only after knowing that time and resources are the most valuable assets for any company. A smart project manager will always optimize both to get maximum results. Knowing the feasibility and potential revenue from a particular project before it gets started will help you save a lot of time and can give you much better results.

How Can You Determine Project Feasibility?

Successful project managers monitor the tasks and are inquisitive. They ensure that each of the key milestones is met and that every project works on track. The real question is do they face any major roadblocks that can risk the entire project along the way? Are there skilled people, better processes, and required tools in place that can monitor the project from its ideation to turning it into reality?

The solutions to all these questions lie in the initiation stage. The stage where you determine your objectives, establish project deliverables and determine whether the project can reasonably give good results. This is where feasibility study comes into play.

What is a feasibility study?

To make it simple, a feasibility study is a process where you assess the practicality of a proposed plan or method. The study has an answer to your question at initial stage that “Is this project feasible?”

You need to determine the answers by asking questions like who, when, what, and how of your project. A wider analysis needs to be done about the kind of people that are eligible to undertake the project. Besides, what and when each of the tasks needs to be done and how together will fall at the right place after the project completion.

The core of feasibility study is the process of evaluation that competes at is best when the results are analyzed to be uncertain and at a higher stake.

Various Types of Feasibility Study

There are five types of feasibility studies and each of these provides a different perspective to enable you to evaluate the viability of your business idea:

1. Economic feasibility

When a business considers budget as a priority, it’s important to determine whether the investment will be worth it. Simply put, will your project be profitable? With an economic feasibility study, you run a cost-benefit analysis to determine how much value the project will bring to the business.

2. Technical feasibility

The technical feasibility studies can be applied to many types of projects, from software development to construction. Validate the technical resources and capabilities needed to convert the ideas into a working project or system.

3. Operational feasibility

It would not be surprising if the most strategic, well-intentioned projects go astray if they’re too difficult to bring together, or don’t directly address or solve the problem at hand. An operational analysis helps you understand how well the proposed project will address the problem.

4. Schedule feasibility

This is also known as time visibility, this type of feasibility study can help you determine how reasonable the project’s timeline is when measured against existing projects and available resources. Proper evaluation at this step can also help you avoid unpredictable or extra costs.

5. Legal feasibility

Legal feasibility analysis helps you understand if your proposed plan conforms to legal and ethical requirements. These requirements may include zoning laws, data protection acts, or privacy laws.

How To Perform A Feasibility Study

Just remember the last time you went on to solve a problem. It could be either at home or at work. Now there are two situations. If the problem was familiar to you, it would be easy to solve because you have previous experience or a game plan to accomplish the solution. The real challenge lies in undertaking new types of problems or circumstances. Here what you need is creativity to think and find innovative solutions.

While you determine the kind of approach needed for a business, problem, or opportunity, it is very important to determine whether your plan of attack is feasible or not. You must know the kind of steps needed to be taken to be successful. So how to identify the feasibility of the project from the one that misguides you?

Check out the seven steps below that determine your project feasibility:

1. Analyze the problem

Firstly, conduct a preliminary analysis of project requirements to assess the practicality and viability of the proposed plan. Do you have the technology and resources required to get the project off the ground? How will you measure and determine the ROI of the project? Understanding your business goals and objectives before you start the project will help keep everyone aligned and working toward the same goal.

2. Evaluate the budget

The fastest way to discontinue any new project or initiative is to misuse or waste the budget. Especially when budgets are limited, your stakeholders want to know whether the money you spend will make a difference to the bottom line. Determine how much budget you have available for the project—and identify the projected revenue streams. How will this project result in a monetary return on investment?

3. Do your research

This is where you need to take a deeper look at the market. Is there a demand for your product or business plan? For smaller projects, what roadblocks will you face along the way? What are your competitors doing? If your project goals are too narrow, or they don’t align to larger business goals, it might be wise to reevaluate your approach.

4. Make a plan

Backed by your research details, create an action plan to bring your project to life. What resources—people, processes, and tech—will you need to complete the project? A work breakdown structure (WBS), which breaks down projects into smaller, more manageable pieces that you can reasonably evaluate and assign to teams, can be used to build this plan.

5. Make a balance sheet

And now that you have an actionable plan in hand, it’s time to reevaluate the finances of the project. To do this, bring in financial data to prepare a project kickoff balance sheet. Are you still projecting the same revenue?

6. Check your data

All you need here is to think twice before you leap. Before you decide whether it makes sense to move forward with the project, take another look at all the data at your fingertips. Objectively, how likely is it that this project will be successful?

7. Decide what’s next

With all of these evaluations in place, you’ll be able to confidently, objectively, and strategically determine whether the project is feasible. If it’s not, you can build a more thoughtful, strategic plan to run through a feasibility study. If all signs point to “yes,” it’s time to give your project the green light.

Suggested Best Practices to Conduct Project Feasibility study

Feasibility studies are exclusive because they reflect the aims and demands of each project. However, the following pointers can be used in any feasibility study for industrial service. For instance, you might wish to try the following:

  • 1.Get feedback from the right stakeholders about the new concep
  • 2.Analyze and challenge your data to ensure that it is reliable.
  • 3.To assist in data collection, conduct a market survey or market research.
  • 4.Make business, organizational, or operational plans.
  • 5.Make forecasted income statement.
  • 6.Prepare forecast of balance sheet.
  • 7.Make a preliminary decision whether to proceed or not regarding carrying out the strategy.

Final Thoughts

Business moves rapidly. Many businesses, tend to skip the evaluation stages just to get the projects to move quickly. What happens, in this case, is that it leads to misalignment, discontinuation, duplication of work and the worse is waste of time and budget. No matter the industry you belong to, a feasibility study helps you trace the possible risks and uncertainties and can increase the odds of your business’s success.

Put your dream project into a feasibility study to make it more real, implementable and help it turn into a success. At Wavy Solutions Inc, we carry years of experience in shaping up several dream projects of our clients into successful organizations. Book a consultation call to understand how we can help you in growing your business.