How to scope a feasibility study before you spend anything
Most feasibility work fails at the scoping stage, not the analysis stage. Here is the sequence we use to define a question that evidence can actually answer.
Start with the decision, not the topic
A feasibility study is only useful if someone is going to decide something at the end of it. Before any data is gathered, write down the decision in one sentence: whether to open the second site, whether to import or manufacture locally, whether the margin survives at half the forecast volume. The decision sets the boundary of the work. Everything that does not move that decision is out of scope, however interesting it looks.
Separate the four questions
Technical feasibility asks whether it can be built. Commercial feasibility asks whether anyone will pay. Operational feasibility asks whether you can run it once it exists. Financial feasibility asks whether the numbers hold under pressure. Teams routinely blur these together and end up with a document that is confident about the wrong thing. Answer them separately, then read them together.
Decide what would change your mind
Write the kill criteria before you collect evidence. If the addressable market is below a stated figure, if the licence takes longer than a stated period, if input costs move beyond a stated band, the project stops. Committing to this in advance is the single most effective guard against a study that quietly rearranges itself to support a decision already made.
Budget for the evidence you actually need
Desk research is cheap and shallow. Primary research is expensive and specific. Map each question to the cheapest evidence that could genuinely settle it, and spend the primary research budget only where a wrong answer would be costly. A good scope document lists the sources next to the questions before the work begins.
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