Scott Wehrley & feasibility

thanks scott -

Even with small projects, it's amazing how things can be misinterpreted and create far more trouble than the project is literally worth. I assume that you have the customer sign an agreement and in the agreement it is stated what specific work will be performed. This would then be your documentation.

By the way, I truly appreciated your article. It actually was a good interface to what I've read so far of PSDP.

Okay, valid questions...

Just so you know, the article wasn't meant to be a complete expose on the Feasability Phase of PSDP, but rather a bridge between my earlier articles (which were based on PSDM) and the sections in the PSDP documentation. For that reason, I kept it short, and lacking the detailed discussions of the topic points.




To answer your first question about the documented vs. verbal feasability study, it's really a matter of "how big is the project?", "how much time does the client want me to spend doing this?", and "how interested is the client in seeing a written report of my findings?". You'll get a feel for this in your initial conversations with the client.

Suppose you are asked to simply put together a web page that displays a customer's profile and contact information. No need for a formal path on this feasability...a quick phone call or email listing the text, images, and URL's on the page will probably do, along with a ballpark estimate of how long it will take you to craft the page.

But in the same situation, suppose your client has to sell the idea of outsourcing the web page to your firm to his superiors. In that case, a formal Memo of Understanding (with ballpark estimates) might suffice, or a more formal document indicating your understanding of the business need, the test cases you intend to use prior to deployment, and any identified deployment issues. That would be an example of a formal Feasability Study.

What I have described above illustrates the difference between the informal, formal, and robust paths in a Feasability Phase.

As to your last question, if you look at the checkpoints for the robust path of a Feasability Phase in the PSDP documentation, you will see that the Requirements Phase must be completed before the Feasability Phase is considered to be complete. By way of explanation, this difference is due to the need to formally document your complete understanding of the project's business needs up front. Rather than doing this effort redundantly for two "phases", the complete Requirements Document will serve as the foundation of your Feasability Study.

I hope this clarifies it for you.