Feasibility Study in SDLC

The feasibility study is the initial step of software development, undertaken by the department’s senior staff, in which they collect fundamental information from clients. This information assists project managers in planning the fundamental project strategy.

Every client comes to a software firm with a problem, and the firm analyzes whether or not it is possible to fix the customer’s problem.

Before we get into what a feasibility study in SLDC is, let’s first define SDLC.

What is SDLC?

A systematic procedure for developing software that assures the quality and accuracy of the product is SDLC. The SDLC process seeks to develop high-quality software that satisfies the expectations of the clients.

The system development should be completed within the schedule and budget constraints.

SDLC is a thorough strategy that describes how to design, construct, and maintain specific software.

Each step of the SDLC life Cycle has its own procedures and deliverables that feed into the next.

SDLC is an abbreviation for Software Development Life Cycle, also known as the Application Development Life Cycle.

The software development life cycle is a collection of concepts and plans that explain the whole process of designing, producing, and maintaining software from start to finish. It is also not a stale procedure.

Every step along the journey, several procedures and deliverables must be worked on to ensure that the next part of the lifecycle runs well.

Why use SDLC?

The following are some of the reasons why we consider SDLC is essential while developing software.

• It serves as a foundation for project planning, scheduling, and estimating.
• It is a project tracking and control method.
• increased and accelerated development
• Assists you in lowering project risk and project management plan overhead.
• Provides a framework for a consistent set of activities and deliverables.
• Increases the visibility of project planning to all development partners.
• enhanced client relationships

SDLC Phases

The SDLC process is divided into the following phases:

• Phase 1: Requirement collection and analysis
• Phase 2: Feasibility study:
• Phase 3: Design:
• Phase 4: Coding:
• Phase 5: Testing:
• Phase 6: Installation/Deployment:
• Phase 7: Maintenance:

What is a feasibility study?

As the names suggest, a feasibility study is used to assess the viability of a project, such as ensuring a project is legally and technically feasible as well as economically reasonable.

It informs us if a project is worth the effort, in some case scenarios, a project may not be doable.

There might be several reasons for this, including the need for too many resources, which not only prohibits those resources from doing other jobs but may also cost more than an entire firm would make back by taking on a project that isn’t financially worthwhile.

A well-designed study should provide a historical context of the business or project, such as a product description or service, financial reports, details of operations and management, marketing research and policies, financial data, legal needs, and tax duties.

In general, such analyses come before technical development and project completion.

Types of Feasibility Study

A feasibility analysis assesses the project’s likelihood of success; hence, perceived objectivity is a significant aspect of the study’s credibility for possible investors and financing institutions.

There are five sorts of feasibility studies—individual topics that a feasibility study investigates, as indicated below.

Technical Feasibility

This assessment focuses on the organization’s technological resources.

It assists companies in determining whether technical resources are enough and whether the technical team is capable of translating ideas into workable systems.

Technical feasibility also includes an assessment of the proposed system’s hardware, software, and other technological needs.

As an extreme example, a company would not want to risk installing Star Trek transporters in its building—this project is presently not physically viable.

Economic Feasibility

This evaluation often includes a cost/benefit analysis of the project, which assists businesses in determining the viability, cost, and advantages of a project before allocating financial resources.

It also functions as an impartial project evaluation and enhances project credibility by assisting decision-makers in determining the positive economic advantages that the proposed project would give to the business.

Operational Feasibility

This evaluation entails researching to establish whether—and how well the organization’s needs can be addressed by finishing the project.

Operational feasibility studies also look at how a project plan meets the criteria specified during the system development requirements analysis phase.

Legal Feasibility

This evaluation looks at if any component of the planned project violates any regulations, such as zoning regulations, data protection legislation, or social media legislation.

Assume a company wishes to develop a new office building in a specified area.

A feasibility study may discover that the desired site for the company is not designated for that sort of business.

That organization has just saved a lot of time and effort by discovering that their project was not possible from the start.

Scheduling Feasibility

It is the most critical assessment for project success; after all, a project will fail if it is not completed on time.

An organization predicts the length of time it will take to finish a project in scheduling feasibility.

When all of these areas have been thoroughly investigated, the feasibility study may assist identify any obstacles that the proposed project may encounter, such as:

• Internal Project Constraints: Technical, technological, financial, and resource constraints, among others.
• Financial, marketing, export, and other internal corporate constraints
• External limitations include logistics, the environment, laws and regulations, and so on.

Feasibility study in SDLC

The feasibility study is the second step of the SDLC. It is the stage at which all of the software needs and requirements are written down and thoroughly documented.

This document is created in this stage with the assistance of the Software Requirement Specification document. It is referred to as the SRS paper.

This document contains all of the necessary information regarding the development process and how everything will be conceived and created throughout the project development lifecycle.

Every project is subjected to five different feasibility tests.

Economic:

Is it possible to complete this project within the budget approved by upper management and stakeholders?

Schedule:

Determine whether or not the project can be completed within the timeframe provided.

Legal:

Can this project meet the requirements of cyberlaw as well as other regulatory compliances?

Technical:

Determine whether the software is compatible with the current computer system.

Operation feasibility:

Are we able to create the operations that the client expects?

The feasibility study is a significant step in any SDLC process because it examines different elements like cost necessary for creating and executing the system, the time necessary for each step of the system, etc.

If these significant variables are not considered, the organization and its development will suffer, and the system would collapse completely.

So, to properly operate the project and the company, this stage is significant in the SDLC process.

After analyzing system requirements, the next phase in the software development life cycle is to analyze software requirements.

In other words, software requirement analysis is another name for a feasibility study.

The development team must communicate with clients, understand their requirements, and analyze the system throughout this phase.

It would be able to create a report on the identified areas of difficulty by analyzing in this manner.

A thorough document or report is created in this phase by doing a comprehensive analysis in this area, which includes details such as the project plan or schedule, the cost expected for designing and executing the system, target dates for each step of delivery of the system produced, etc.

This phase is the foundation of the software development process since subsequent phases in the software development life cycle are based on the analysis performed in this phase, hence rigorous analysis must be performed in this phase.

Though the feasibility study cannot be concentrated on a particular area, some of the areas or analyses were done in the feasibility study are included below.

However, all of the processes outlined below will not be followed by every system constructed.

The feasibility study differs depending on the system that will be constructed.

• A feasibility analysis is conducted on the system under development to determine if the system development process necessitates people training.
• This aids in the design of training sessions as needed in the future.
• Is the system designed with the ability to grow or transition to new technologies in the future if necessary? Another study is being conducted to determine the system’s mobility in the future.
• Is the system development cost prohibitively expensive, or does it come in under budget? A cost-benefit analysis is performed. In other words, the project’s cost feasibility is assessed.
• This assists in determining if the company will meet the planned expenditures and assists the business in creating earlier and more effective preparations for meeting additional expenditures due to system development.
• A decision is taken on the software to utilize to create the system. This study and analysis will aid in determining the optimum system and organizational implementation.
• This feasibility study considers variables such as scalability, installation, development, and so on. In a nutshell, this feasibility assessment examines technical topics.
• This analysis aids in the improvement of the system’s efficiency. That is due to the fact that selecting the appropriate technology based on a study of the system demands aids in boosting the system efficiency.

The aforementioned feasibility is analyses that aid in the development of the system.

However, the scope of the feasibility study does not end there.

The analysis or feasibility study also includes a maintenance stage analysis.

In other words, a feasibility study is conducted to determine how the system will be maintained throughout the maintenance stage.

This aids with strategic planning for this period as well as risk analysis.

The study also aids in determining what training should be provided, and how and what documentation should be generated to assist users and developers throughout the maintenance phase.

Benefits of Conducting a Feasibility Study:

There are several benefits to doing a feasibility study, some of which are listed below:

• This research, created as the first phase in the software development life cycle, includes all of the analytic components that aid in thoroughly examining the system requirements.
• Aids in identifying the risk variables involved in the system development and deployment.
• The feasibility study aids in risk analysis planning.
• A feasibility study aids in the creation of a cost/benefit analysis, which aids in the effective operation of the organization and system.
• A feasibility study aids in developing strategies for training developers to deploy the system.
• A feasibility study is a report that might be used by the organization’s senior or top management because the organization decides on cost estimation, funding, and other vital decisions based on the report, which is critical for an organization to function financially and for the system to work smoothly.
• So, before producing a product or software, it is crucial to do feasibility studies in some or all of the areas stated, which will aid in the development and maintenance of the program efficiently and effectively within budgeted expenditures.

In conclusion

The feasibility study is essentially a test of the proposed system in terms of its usability, satisfying user needs, effective resource use, and, of course, cost-effectiveness.

The primary purpose of a feasibility study is to accomplish the scope rather than to solve the problem.

During the feasibility study, the costs and benefits are more precisely calculated to determine the Return on Investment (ROI).

This also specifies the resources required to accomplish the in-depth inquiry. The result is a feasibility study that is presented to management. This can be approved, accepted with changes, or rejected.