Part 1: I'd love a new site – but first a proper feasibility study

In the name of transparency, let me first say that I work a lot with feasibility studies, so I am biased. But it also means that I have seen and discussed more feasibility studies than many others, and there are plenty of examples of feasibility studies that make no sense at all.

Research can give a skewed picture of feasibility studies

In my Linkedin bubble, many people recently applauded a study at Chalmers External link. that concludes that "The effect of 'strategic planning' on creating business 'results' is negative for public organisations and remains inconclusive, due to insufficient evidence, for private organisations." Researchers take a broader perspective than the approach of creating a new website or digital workplace, and often focus their research on the public sector. This leads many to conclude, wrongly, that it is better to "stop planning and just start building".

In our industry, we also see an expression of this in the packages or shells for Sharepoint and Office 365 in particular, and where the promise is somewhat harsh: "We have thought, you just go". From more vulgar American business language we learn things like "Fail fast, fail often".

I could pile examples on top of each other but let's bounce back about 100 years to the most famous statement about feasibility studies: that of Henry Ford. Whether he actually said the following is disputed but he is often attributed with the quote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Focus on the needs, not the solution

Here's where it gets really interesting, because Ford (if it was him) defines a bad feasibility study: the one where we ask users, customers, employees what they want. Ford is forever inscribed in automotive history, not because he asked people stupid questions, but because he understood needs. He understood that people wanted to move more comfortably and quickly from point A to point B.

Whether he understood that through a feasibility study, I don't know. I don't know if he was even particularly innovative in understanding this, or if the innovation was in the implementation, but here you have the magic formula for your next development project. You need to understand what people need, not what they want.

It's no use knowing that people want a better search engine. Everyone always wants that. You need to know what they need to find to solve the task they have in the situation they have it. Only then can you improve the search.

The basic requirements of a feasibility study:

• It must include the people who will use the service/product (in our case usually a website or digital workplace)
• It should never be based on existing or imagined solutions
• It should produce results that will guide both the project and the future management

But what about platform selection? Budget? Governance? Yes, a feasibility study is not a clearly defined matter. Different organisations have different project models. Maybe you need to answer these questions as well before you have a feasibility study that the management or IT steering group wants to see. But until you have a feasibility study that shows what you are going to achieve, none of the other questions will be answered.

In part two of my mini-series, we'll take a closer look at what parameters will allow you to really act on your feasibility study.