Feasibility and Viability
Desirable is one of three. This lesson covers the other two: whether you can actually build and run the thing, and whether the numbers work well enough for somebody to fund it.
After this lesson you can
- Tell a feasibility problem from a viability one, because they have different fixes.
- Bring both in at convergence, as criteria among several rather than as the only ones.
- Find the version of a concept that runs on what exists today.
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Module Overview
Once feedback has settled the question of whether people want it, the questions change: what technology and resources would this need, and does the business case stand up.
Start by mapping the business model on a single page: the value proposition against customers, partners, channels, key relationships, the resources you would need and where revenue comes from. Use it to get subject-matter experts to react, and to show you where the next set of risky assumptions is hiding. Then build a lean experiment map from those assumptions: take the most critical and most uncertain first, form a hypothesis, design an experiment, agree what success looks like before you run it, and record the result so it can inform whether you pivot or carry on.
Go to the real experts for this, meaning finance, marketing, and the people who will build, sell, run and use the thing. Treat a challenged assumption as learning rather than a setback, because it is still early. Experimentation can run forever, so agree up front how much time and resource you have and how finished this needs to be, and use milestone maps and a 30-60-90 day roadmap to keep the team to it.
Where this usually goes wrong
- Raising feasibility before ideation, where it becomes a list of reasons not to think.
- Leaving it until handover, where it becomes somebody else's reason to say no.
- Treating a two year platform dependency as a full stop rather than as a business case.
Check it landed
3 questions, and one of them has no right answer. You get the reasoning either way.
People love the concept, but delivering it costs more than anybody will pay for it. What is it?
When should feasibility first come into the conversation?
The concept is desirable and viable, but IT say the platform it needs is two years away. What now?
Sign in to answer these and see the reasoning behind each one.
Put it to work
2 templates go with this lesson. Each one has its own guide on when and how to use it.
