Feasibility Study TELOS

The Feasibility Study will help in the company understanding the projects viability by looking at several factors to gain a full picture of the project in the current environment. With this information an informed decision can be made on whether the project will go ahead or change in scope and time frame or be left until the situation changes.

Many Feasibility studies are based on TELOS which will cover most of the areas that are required to fully understand the projects viability.

First it is worth quickly outlining what TELOS stands for:

• T Technology and System Feasibility
• E Economic Feasibility
• L Legal Feasibility
• O Operational Feasibility
• S Schedule Feasibility

It is also be noted that “Telos” is the Greek word at the route of the word “Teleology” which is the study of objects with a view to their aims, goals and purpose.  This is in many ways interesting as the aims, goals and purpose of a project are relevant to thinking about the feasibility study.

Technology and System Feasibility

This deals with the main question of whether the technology or the understanding of its application relevant to the project exists and how accessible this technology is to the project. An understanding of what is required is achieved through the process of creating a draft outline of the finished project showing the process and information requirements that will be needed.

Economic Feasibility

This will look at the cost and the estimated value of the project to consider whether it is worth undertaking. There are several processes for doing this, many of which hide under the name of cost benefits analysis or NPV.

Legal Feasibility

This looks at all the current legislation that will affect the project and looks to understand the impact this will have. This can be from external regulatory or government bodes such as FSA and HMRC but it should also look at already made commitments to the company/organisation in its own internal policy.

Operational Feasibility

This element of the study aims to assess how effective the project will be in solving the problems and achieving the benefits that are the goal of the project. An example of this would be to see how effective the application of say a knowledge base would be in improving the agents ability to deal with inquires quicker.

Schedule Feasibility

This final stage looks at the schedule for delivery of the project and assesses how viable this time frame is.  If the schedule is seen as un-viable it is reworked until it is seen to be a realistic estimate of the time and resource required to undertake the project.

In Summary

Through looking at all the individual elements of TELOS it becomes clear whether a project is viable and how it compares to other projects, if you are assessing different options. It is not uncommon on large projects to use the TELOS framework to assess individual elements of the projects.

This is a only a quick over view of TELOS and we will look at the other elements of feasibility study in later blogs.

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Related posts:

1. Project Start Up – Feasibility Study – Outline