Description from Agenda:

Track III: Considering the Business
Suite 3
Determining Project Feasibility
Mike O’Connor; President, O’Connor Company
Success requires starting with the end in mind. Get an insider scoop on understanding the decision-making process; conducting and interpreting market studies; and developing a successful design, costing and financial modeling processes.

Notes from the Session:

During the session we filled out the following chart: 

The problem we have is complicated. We try to solve it at once – but it’s too big. We need to divide the problem into smaller chunks. Engineers do this – and solve similar problems in similar ways to avoid mistakes that already happened and to build upon the method that’s there.

Needs Assessment should be quick and cheap and give a good assessment of need. Then you can decide if it’s worth it to carry on.

Feasibility study is like Needs Assessment – but not really. Feasibility can get you into projects that are too big or too small – it doesn’t address the issue of need. It really fits in between the Requirements Definition and Procure or Design stages. Or even better – it makes sense to be a feasibility study after each stage on an ongoing basis.

Breaking this big project into chunks makes it easier to manage cost and time expectations. Blandin can help foster this methodology. Communities would benefit from example deliverables, examples phases – estimating guidelines.

One of the tasks of regional broadband group is to crease a history of broadband projects to help to communities learn from other projects.

Timelines are very important.