Structuring feasibility studies for emerging hardware platforms
By Educraftech
New silicon, new radio, new sensor — the pressure is always to "try it quickly". But a feasibility study that starts as an unstructured demo ends as an opinion. Structure is what turns two weeks of engineering into a decision the business can stand on.
Write the question before touching the hardware
"Is platform X viable for product Y?" is not a question. "Can platform X sustain 200 Hz sampling with under 5 ms jitter at under 80 mW?" is. Every feasibility study we run opens with a one-page brief: the question, the numbers that answer it, and who is waiting on the answer.
Define the kill criterion up front
The most valuable output of a feasibility study is a fast, defensible no. Agreeing before the study what result would kill the option removes the temptation to keep massaging a marginal prototype toward a yes.
Measure, then archive
Instrumented test benches, versioned firmware, raw logs kept with the report. Six months later, when the vendor releases silicon rev B, the study can be re-run in days — because the method, not just the conclusion, was the deliverable.