Feasibility Study

Origin. Capital-project appraisal; TELOS (technical, economic, legal, operational, schedule).

Mechanism. Checks each necessary condition for a project independently, on the logic that feasibility is a conjunction: the study is designed to find one false conjunct cheaply.

Procedure. Assess technical, economic, legal, operational, and schedule feasibility separately. Any single infeasibility terminates. Rank the assessments by cost, cheapest first, and stop at the first failure.

Applies to. Kill decisions before capital is committed.

Limitations. Feasibility studies are commissioned by their projects' sponsors and are read as advocacy. The reference class of feasibility studies for projects that were subsequently cancelled is small for reasons that have nothing to do with feasibility.