JOLT | PROJECT INITIATION

What is a feasibility study and how do you go about writing it?

Most simply, a feasibility study is an in-depth look at a potential business undertaking with stress on potential problems. There are two main things that it attempts to find out: will it work and should you go ahead with it.

However, before you even start writing a feasibility study, you might be asking yourself, why is it even important? This type of study is actually important for several reasons. First, it helps you figure out all the parts you will need in order to make your future business venture work. Second, it helps you highlight the business and logistical issues you might face and work out solutions before they happen. This can include things such as location.

In fact, location is one of the most important things. Even a great business idea is doomed to fail if you don’t set it up in the right location. This is especially important in retail businesses. Third, it allows you to figure out an effective marketing strategy so that you are able to get investors. Lastly, it is a solid starting point to build your business plan on.

Now that you know why you should be writing a feasibility study, you need to know how to write it. Any good feasibility study includes at least the following six parts.

Start you feasibility study with your Business’ description. Here you will describe what types of services or products you have.
Next, include details on the technical feasibility. This includes details such as what type of technology you will be using, where you will be located, transportation, labor, and materials that you will need.

The next section is where you focus on the financial feasibility of the business. This is where you need to state where you will get capital and how you will return these investments.

The next section after that is about the organizational feasibility. This includes the corporate and legal structure of the business. This is a great area to put in a little bit about the history of the company founders and how their experiences will help the company grow.

Lastly, don’t forget to include a conclusion. This is where you draw the picture for potential future investors and how you see the business succeeding. However, make sure to be honest and use facts to back up your claims.

If you would like to know more about writing a feasibility study, and dive into each one of its six elements – make sure to check out the full article.

So… what is Agile?
Agile is a conceptual model that promotes the idea of developing software based on short iterations. Agile is based on a bunch of abstract principles that deal with how product teams work and how interactions between development teams and clients should behave.

There are several practice-oriented frameworks that offer practical ways of implementing the ideas that the Agile concept offers. The most popular of them are Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Extreme Programming.

Scrum is perhaps the most famous Agile software framework. In fact, for many people, it “is” Agile. However, in reality, Scrum is most importantly a framework for managers. It is the thing that developers do when they aren’t writing code. It helps them plan and analyze things. The main artifacts in Scrum are the user story, task, backlog, sprint backlog, product increment, and extensions. The main roles are the development team, scrum master, and product owner.

Kanaban is another big player in the Agile environment. It is a process that works on the idea that production is based on consumption. As such, it focuses on not producing any surplus. In addition, it focuses on the idea of pull instead of push. That is, instead of giving work to workers, they take work when they are able to do so. These ideas lead to the main principles of reducing multitasking, decreasing waste, and focusing on customer needs first.

Lean Software development is another player in the Agile work environment. This process is very similar to the Kanaban method in that it focuses on reducing waste, limiting multitasking, and focusing on pulling rather than pushing work. However, it is different in that it focuses on engineering practices such as test driven development where you fail fast and often in order to get to the best final product quicker.

The last popular Agile framework is XP or extreme programming. This idea takes certain programming processes to their extreme and sees what happens. This is done in order to try and get the developer’s full potential. Practices include planning game, test driven development, pair programming, whole team, continuous integration, refactoring, small releases, coding standards, collective ownership, simple design, system metaphor, and sustainable pace.

We recommend that you visit the original article to learn more about the most popular Agile methods. You’ll find great infographic charts that describe the different flows each one of the methods offers.