Technical Feasibility Assessment Template - Free Word Download - PM Resource Hub - The Center Of Excellence For Project Professionals

Technical Feasibility Assessment Template – Free Word Download

Introduction to the Technical Feasibility Assessment

In the modern business landscape, almost every project is a technology project. Whether you are launching a marketing campaign, building a warehouse, or restructuring HR, there is inevitably a software, hardware, or data component involved. The Technical Feasibility Assessment (TFA) is the document that determines whether the organization has the technological capability to deliver the project.

Enjoy this Technical Feasibility Assessment Template – Free Word Download

While the general Feasibility Study (Template 29) looks at the broad picture (Legal, Economic, etc.), the TFA is a deep dive into the engineering reality. It answers specific, binary questions: Do the systems exist? Can they talk to each other? Will they handle the load? Is the data secure?

A project that passes the “Economic” test (it makes money) might fail the “Technical” test (it is impossible to build with current technology). For example, a project to “use AI to predict stock prices with 100% accuracy” might look profitable, but a TFA would quickly deem it technically impossible.

This template is designed for Solution Architects, Lead Developers, and Technical Project Managers. It forces the team to look under the hood of the proposed solution before a single line of code is written. It covers architecture, integration, security, performance, and the availability of technical skills.

By completing this assessment, you prevent the most expensive type of project failure: discovering mid-development that the legacy mainframe cannot actually support the real-time API calls you promised the client.

Part 1: Assessment Context and Scope

Before analyzing the technology, you must define the boundaries of the system you are assessing.

Project Background

Instructions:

Briefly summarize the functional goal. What is the business trying to achieve?

Project Name: [Insert Name]
Business Goal: “To allow customers to track their delivery trucks in real-time via a mobile app.”
Technical Stakeholders: [List the Architects, IT Directors, and Security Officers involved].

Scope of Technology

Instructions:

Define what is in and out of the assessment. Are you assessing the mobile app only, or the backend servers too?

In Scope: Mobile Application (iOS/Android), GPS Middleware, Cloud Database.
Out of Scope: The physical GPS hardware on the trucks (already installed and verified in a previous project).

Part 2: Current State Architecture (The “As-Is”)

You cannot build a new floor on a house without checking the foundation. This section analyzes what currently exists.

Legacy Systems Analysis

Instructions:

List the existing systems that the new project will touch. Assess their health.

Table: Legacy System Health Check

System Name	Age	Technology Stack	Integration Capability	Risk Level
ERP (SAP)	10 Years	ABAP / On-Premise	Low (Batch files only)	High
CRM (Salesforce)	2 Years	Cloud / Apex	High (REST APIs available)	Low
Warehouse DB	15 Years	Oracle 10g	Medium (Direct SQL access)	Medium

Narrative Analysis:

“The core challenge identified is the Legacy ERP system. It does not support real-time web services. Currently, it only exports data once per night via CSV files. This technical limitation directly conflicts with the business requirement for ‘Real-Time’ tracking. Significant remediation work or a middleware layer will be required to bridge this gap.”

Technical Debt

Instructions:

Be honest about the mess. Is the code clean, or is it “spaghetti code”?

Observation: “The Warehouse Database has no documentation and the original developer has left the company. The schema is highly normalized but difficult to decipher.”
Impact: “Any changes to this database will require 50% more time for reverse-engineering and regression testing.”

Part 3: Proposed Target Architecture (The “To-Be”)

This section outlines the hypothesis. If we build this, what does it look like?

Opens in a new window

Getty Images

Data Warehouse Architecture

High-Level Design (HLD)

Instructions:

Describe the proposed stack.

Frontend: React Native (Mobile App).
Backend: Node.js hosted on AWS Lambda (Serverless).
Database: DynamoDB (NoSQL) for speed.
Integration Layer: MuleSoft ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) to talk to the legacy ERP.

Build vs. Buy Analysis

Instructions:

Justify whether you are coding this from scratch or buying a product.

Decision: Buy (SaaS) with Custom Integration.
Rationale: “Building a custom GPS tracking engine would take 12 months. Purchasing the ‘TrackRight’ API allows us to launch in 3 months. We will only build the custom user interface.”
Technical Fit: “The ‘TrackRight’ API uses standard JSON/REST, which is fully compatible with our Node.js backend.”

Part 4: Integration and Interfaces

This is where most technical projects fail. Systems work fine in isolation; they break when they try to talk to each other.

Interface Matrix

Instructions:

Map every point where data moves between systems.

Source System	Destination System	Data Type	Method	Frequency	Feasibility
Truck GPS	Cloud DB	Lat/Long Coordinates	MQTT (IoT Protocol)	Every 5 seconds	High (Standard Protocol)
Cloud DB	Mobile App	Location Status	HTTPS / REST	On Demand	High
ERP	Mobile App	Customer Order Details	SOAP / XML	Real-time	Low (Requires wrapper)

API Maturity Assessment

Instructions:

Evaluate the quality of the connections.

Question: Do the external systems have documentation (Swagger/OpenAPI)?
Finding: “The ERP system lacks API documentation. We will have to rely on trial-and-error testing.”
Mitigation: “Allocate 3 weeks for ‘Integration Spiking’ (prototyping) to verify connectivity before the main build phase begins.”

Part 5: Infrastructure and Hosting

Where will this code live?

Hardware Requirements

Instructions:

If on-premise, list the physical gear needed.

Servers: N/A (Cloud Native).
Network: Requires opening Port 443 and Port 8883 on the corporate firewall to allow IoT traffic.

Cloud Capabilities

Instructions:

If cloud-based, verify the subscription limits.

Provider: AWS (Amazon Web Services).
Service Limits: “We expect to hit the default concurrent execution limit for Lambda functions. We must request a quota increase from AWS Support.”
Region: “Data must be hosted in the ‘us-east-1’ region to minimize latency for our primary customer base.”

Part 6: Performance and Scalability

Will the system crash on Black Friday?

Load Projections

Instructions:

Define the math of usage.

Concurrent Users: 5,000 peak.
Transactions Per Second (TPS): 500 requests/sec.
Data Growth: 10 GB per day.

Scalability Strategy

Instructions:

How does the system handle growth?

Horizontal Scaling: “The Node.js layer will auto-scale. We can spin up infinite instances based on CPU load.”
Vertical Scaling: “The Legacy ERP cannot scale. If hits exceed 50 per second, it will crash.”
Bottleneck Identification: “The ERP is the hard constraint. We must implement a ‘Caching Layer’ (Redis) to store order details so we do not hit the ERP for every single user request.”

Part 7: Security and Compliance

Is the system safe?

Data Security

Instructions:

Consult with the InfoSec team (Information Security).

Encryption at Rest: “All customer data in the database must be encrypted using AES-256.”
Encryption in Transit: “All API calls must use TLS 1.2 or higher.”
Authentication: “We will use Auth0 for user identity management. We will NOT store passwords in our own database.”

Compliance Requirements

Instructions:

List technical rules driven by law.

GDPR (Europe): “The system must have a ‘Right to be Forgotten’ function that mechanically deletes all user logs upon request.”
PCI-DSS (Payments): “Since we are accepting credit cards, the payment page must be an iframe hosted by the payment gateway, not by us. This reduces our compliance scope to SAQ-A.”

Part 8: Disaster Recovery (DR) and Availability

What happens when the data center burns down?

Availability Targets

Instructions:

Define the “Nines.”

Target: 99.9% Uptime (allows for roughly 8 hours of downtime per year).
Feasibility: “Achievable with the proposed cloud architecture using Multi-AZ (Availability Zone) deployment.”

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

Instructions:

How fast must we be back up?

Requirement: 4 Hours.
Technical Reality: “Our backups are taken every 24 hours. If we crash at hour 23, we lose 23 hours of data. To meet the business need, we must switch to continuous replication logs.”

Part 9: The Skill Gap (Human Feasibility)

Technical feasibility is not just about machines; it is about the people who program them.

Team Capability Assessment

Instructions:

Do we have the brains to build this?

Table: Skills Inventory

Required Skill	Current Team Level	Gap	Resolution
Node.js	Expert	None	N/A
AWS Lambda	Intermediate	Minor	Internal mentoring
MuleSoft ESB	None	Critical	Must hire a contractor or external consultant.
Cybersecurity	Novice	High	Engage InfoSec team for code reviews.

Narrative:

“The project is technically feasible hardware-wise, but not feasible with the current staff roster. We lack the specialized MuleSoft knowledge required to unlock the ERP data. Proceeding without hiring an external expert will result in failure.”

Part 10: Technical Risks and Constraints

Summarize the things that could go wrong.

Critical Technical Risks

Latency Risk: “The sheer distance between the GPS devices and the server might introduce a 2-second lag. This might violate the ‘Real-Time’ requirement.”
Legacy Dependency: “The ERP is scheduled for maintenance every Sunday night. The mobile app will be unable to show order details during this window.”
Vendor Lock-in: “Using the ‘TrackRight’ proprietary API means we cannot easily switch vendors later.”

Technical Constraints

Network Bandwidth: “The warehouse Wi-Fi only supports 100 Mbps. We cannot push heavy video data over this link.”
Mobile OS Support: “We will support iOS 15+ and Android 12+. Older devices are technically excluded.”

Part 11: Feasibility Conclusion

The final verdict from the Chief Architect or Technical Lead.

The Verdict

Instructions:

Choose one.

Technically Feasible: Standard tech, low risk.
Feasible with Workarounds: Possible, but ugly or expensive.
Technically Infeasible: The laws of physics or code prevent this.

Example Statement:

“This project is assessed as Feasible with Significant Risk. While the cloud and mobile components are straightforward, the integration with the 10-year-old ERP system is a major bottleneck. The project is only feasible if the business accepts a ‘Near Real-Time’ (5-minute delay) standard rather than ‘Instant’ real-time, allowing us to use caching. If ‘Instant’ is a hard requirement, the project is Not Feasible without replacing the ERP first.”

Part 12: Step-by-Step Guide for Conducting the TFA

Step 1: The “Spike”

Do not just read documentation. Write a small script. Try to ping the server. Try to extract one record. This is called a “Spike” or “Tracer Bullet.” If you can’t get ‘Hello World’ to work between the two systems in 2 days, you won’t get the complex data to work in 2 months.

Step 2: The Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) Workshop

Sit down with stakeholders and ask the boring questions. “How fast must it load? 1 second? 10 seconds?” “How many users? 100? 1 million?” The difference between 100 and 1 million users changes the entire architecture.

Step 3: The Security Audit

Bring in the security team early. If they say “You can’t put customer data in the Cloud,” and you designed a Cloud solution, your feasibility study is dead.

Step 4: The Data Flow Diagram

Draw it. If you cannot draw a line showing how data gets from A to B, it means you don’t know. “Magic” is not a valid technical strategy.

Step 5: Peer Review

Have an architect from a different team review your findings. They will spot the blind spots (e.g., “You forgot about the firewall rules”).

Part 13: Glossary of Technical Terms

API (Application Programming Interface): The messenger that allows two different applications to talk to each other.
Latency: The delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction.
Throughput: How much data can pass through the system in a given amount of time.
Technical Debt: The implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer.
Scalability: The capability of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system.

Conclusion

The Technical Feasibility Assessment is the shield that protects the organization from “Vaporware” (software that is promised but cannot be built). It moves the conversation from “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” to “Here is exactly how we will build it.”

By completing this template, you provide the project with a solid engineering blueprint. You identify the quicksand (legacy systems) and the bridges (middleware) before the team starts marching. This document ensures that when the project is approved, it is approved based on technical reality, not wishful thinking.

Final Checklist for this Template:

Did you assess the Legacy Systems?
Is the Build vs. Buy decision justified?
Did you map the Interfaces (APIs)?
Is Security (Encryption/Compliance) covered?
Did you calculate the Load and Performance limits?
Is the Skill Gap identified?

Meta Description:

A template for a Technical Feasibility Assessment. Learn to evaluate system architecture, API integration, security risks, and performance scalability for new projects.