10.3 Recommendation Reports and Feasibility Studies
Feasibility and recommendation reports are most often the final step in a series of documents, often beginning with a proposal and perhaps a series of progress reports, or they can be created in response to a smaller challenge. Feasibility, recommendation, evaluation, and assessment reports are analytic reports that all do roughly the same thing—provide a careful study of a situation or problem and often recommend what should be done to improve a situation. There are some subtle differences among these types, and names for them can vary. They can be written as long reports in response to complex situations or as shorter reports for less complex ones.
This chapter will discuss what feasibility and recommendation reports consist of and how to create and organize their contents. To view examples of both business and technical feasibility and recommendation reports, please visit David McMurrey’s Online Technical Writing: Examples, Cases, and Models.
Feasibility Reports
A feasibility report presents an opinion about a situation (for example, a problem or opportunity) and assesses a plan for doing something about it. The report then discusses whether that plan is “feasible”—whether it is practical in terms of current resources, technology, economics, time frame, social needs and preferences, and so on. The feasibility report answers the question “Should we implement Plan X?” by stating “yes,” “no,” or sometimes a “maybe” or “under certain conditions.” Not only does it indicate whether the idea is feasible, it also provides the data and the reasoning behind that determination; conversely, it might outline the reasons why the idea cannot or should not be implemented, or what obstacles must be overcome before the idea can become feasible. Typical questions addressed in these reports include
- Is it possible? Can this be done within the allotted budget, time frame, legal and regulatory conditions, and technical capabilities?
- Is it financially viable? Even if it falls within our budget, should we do it? Will it have long-term benefits that outweigh costs? Is there a less expensive or financially risky way to achieving the same result? How does it compare to the cost of doing nothing about this situation?
- Will it be accepted by the community? Will people be in favor of this idea? Will anyone be opposed to it? How much public support is necessary to make this successful? (What kind of stakeholder consultation might be necessary to determine this?)
- Do we have the expertise and human capital to proceed? Does the company have the expertise, resources, and time to commit to the completion of the project within a specified time?
For an example of a formal feasibility study, see this Student-Feasibility-Report-sample (Fleming, n.d.).
Recommendation Reports
A recommendation report starts from a stated need; it outlines criteria for assessing the options, offers a selection of solution options, presents a detailed comparative analysis of the options, and then recommends one, some, or none. For example, a company might be looking at grammar-checking software and want a recommendation on which product is the best fit for them. Criteria for selection might be cost, installation, training, and privacy. As the report writer on this project, you could study the market for this type of application and recommend one particular product, two-to-three possible products (differing perhaps in their strengths and their weaknesses), or none (maybe none of them are appropriate for the client’s specific needs) after comparing each using the criteria for selection. The recommendation report answers the question “Which option should we choose?” (or in some cases “Which are the best options?) by recommending Product B, or maybe both Products B and C, or none of the products. These recommendations might arise from questions such as
- What should we do about Problem X?
- What features or characteristics would address our needs?
- What is the best way to provide Function or Service A?
- Should we use Technology X or Technology Y to perform Function Z?
The video, Feasibility Analysis (2021), takes us through the process of constructing a feasibility report.
Example of a Short Recommendation Report
To: Ralph Niblet, CEO
From: Hannah Vuong, Communications Manager
Subject: Migrating to MailChimp
Date: September 1, 20XX
Hi Ralph,
Last week, you asked me to research whether we should switch our email marketing software from Constant Contact to MailChimp. I think we should adopt MailChimp for the following reasons:
- MailChimp is free for a business of our size, while Constant Contact would cost $57 a month.
- MailChimp integrates with Salesforce and would allow us to use our database more effectively. I spoke to Sam Cho, who currently administers our Salesforce account, and he shared many exciting ways in which we could integrate the two platforms without much effort. He also offered to host a webinar to train our staff.
- MailChimp allows us to segment audiences more effectively. I’ve included in a separate document some links to a few blog posts that illustrate what we could do. A lot of our current unsubscribes happen because we can’t target emails to specific groups of customers effectively. Our email marketing report from last quarter showed that 70% unsubscribed because of emails that were “not relevant.”
Some colleagues have voiced the objection that they already know how to use Constant Contact, and they find MailChimp less intuitive. We will also have to migrate our existing data and clean it. These barriers, however, can easily be overcome with employee training and good data migration practices.
I am happy to show you a demo of MailChimp this week if you are free. Please send me your availability.
Thanks,
Hannah
Figure 10.3.2 Example of a short recommendation email report (Cruthers, 2020).
Knowledge Check
Typical Contents of Recommendation and Feasibility Reports
Whatever variety of feasibility or recommendation report you write—most of the sections and the organization of those sections are roughly the same.
The structural principle fundamental to this type of report is this: You provide not only your recommendation, choice, or judgment, but also the data, analysis, discussion, and the conclusions leading to it. That way, readers can check your findings, your logic, and your conclusions to make sure your methodology was sound and that they can agree with your recommendation. Your goal is to convince the reader to agree with you by using your careful research, detailed analysis, rhetorical style, and documentation.
The general problem-solving approach for a recommendation report entails the steps shown in the example below.
| 1. Identify the need | What is the “unsatisfactory situation” that needs to be improved or addressed? |
| 2. Identify the criteria for responding to the need |
What is the overall goal? What are the specific, measurable objectives any solution should achieve? What constraints must any solution adhere to? |
| 3. Determine the solution options you will examine |
Define the scope of your approach to the problem. Identify the possible courses of action that you will examine in your report. You might include the consequences of simply doing nothing. |
| 4. Study how well each option meets the criteria |
Systematically study each option, and compare how well they meet each of the objectives you have set. Provide a systematic and quantifiable way to compare how well the solution options meet the objectives (consider using a weighted objectives chart). |
| 5. Draw conclusions based on your analysis | Based on the research presented in your discussion section, sum up your findings and give a comparative evaluation of how well each of the options meets the criteria and addresses the need. |
| 6. Formulate recommendations based on your conclusion | Indicate which course of action the reader should take to address the problem, based on your analysis of the data presented in the report. |
These steps generally coincide with how you will organize your information. Your report will be divided into several sections that will likely include most or all of the following elements:
- INTRODUCTION: The introduction should clearly state the document’s purpose. Your introduction will include the problem definition, which discusses the “unsatisfactory situation” or opportunity that has given rise to this report and the requirements that must be met. Finally, provide an overview of the contents of the report.
- BACKGROUND and REQUIREMENTS: Most recommendation or feasibility reports require establishing the need for the recommendation in order to make the rest of the report meaningful. You should include some background information to describe the circumstances leading up to the situation and your report. The background can serve to establish the criteria upon which the comparisons is being made. For example, a discussion of the power and speed of tablets is going to necessitate some discussion of RAM, megahertz, and processors. Establish the characteristics upon which your decision can be made:
- If you’re trying to recommend a tablet for use by employees, your requirements are likely to involve size, cost, hard-disk storage, display quality, durability, and battery function.
- If you’re looking into the feasibility of providing every student at Austin Community College with an ID on the ACC computer network, you’d need to define the basic requirements of such a program—what it would be expected to accomplish, problems that it would have to avoid, and so on.
- If you’re evaluating the recent program of free bus transportation in Austin, you’d need to know what was expected of the program and then compare its actual results to those requirements.
Requirements can be defined in several ways:
Numerical Values: Many requirements are stated as maximum or minimum numerical values. For example, there may be a cost requirement—the tablet should cost no more than $900.
Yes/no Values: Some requirements are simply a yes-no question. Does the tablet come equipped with Bluetooth? Is the car equipped with voice recognition?
Ratings Values: In some cases, key considerations cannot be handled either with numerical values or yes/no values. For example, your organization might want a tablet that has an ease-of-use rating of at least “good” by some nationally accepted ratings group. Or you may have to assign ratings yourself.
The requirements should also discuss how important the individual requirements are in relation to each other. Picture the typical situation where no one option is best in all categories of comparison. One option is cheaper; another has more functions; one has better ease-of-use ratings; another is known to be more durable. Set up your requirements so that they dictate a “winner” from a situation where there is no obvious winner. A “weighted objectives chart” or “Decision Matrix” is often used in these cases.
3. DISCUSSION OF SOLUTION OPTIONS: In certain kinds of feasibility or recommendation reports, you’ll need to explain how you narrowed the field of choices down to the ones your report focuses on. In this section, discuss the comparisons using the point-by-point or block methods. Your basic requirements may well narrow the field down for you. But other considerations may disqualify other options—explain these as well.
Additionally, you may need to provide brief descriptions of the options themselves. Don’t get this mixed up with the comparison that comes up in the next section. In this description section, you provide a general discussion of the options so that readers will know something about them. The discussion at this stage is not comparative. It’s just a general orientation to the options. In the tablets example, you might want to give some brief, general specifications on each model about to be compared.
4. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: One of the most important parts of a feasibility or recommendation report is the comparison of the options. Remember that you include this section so that readers can follow the logic of your analysis and develop some agreement with your conclusion; alternatively, they could come up with different conclusions if they desire. Be sure to use an objective and fair approach during this comparison phase. The comparison can be structured using a “block” (whole-to-whole) approach, or an “alternating” (point-by-point) approach.
| Block Approach | Alternating (Point-by-Point) Approach |
|
All the information about Option 1 |
Compare all options according to Criteria A (e.g., cost) |
|
All the information about Option 2 |
Compare all options according to Criteria B (e.g., functionality) |
|
All the information about Option 3 |
Compare all options according to Criteria C (e.g., ease of use) |
|
Direct comparative analysis of all three options and a summary of results |
Summary of results |
You might compare three options (1, 2, and 3) using three criteria for comparison (A, B, and C). If you were comparing tablets, you’d likely use the point-by-point approach, having a section that compared all three options based on cost (criteria A), another section that compared them on battery function, and so on. You wouldn’t have a section that discussed everything about option 1, another that discussed everything about option 2, and so on. That would not be effective or efficient because you still have to make direct comparisons somewhere near the end of your discussion (such as in a weighted objectives chart).
Each of these comparative sections should end with a conclusion that sums up the relative strengths and weaknesses of each option and indicates which option is the best choice in that particular category of comparison. Of course, it won’t always be easy to state a clear winner—you may have to qualify the conclusions in various ways, providing multiple conclusions for different conditions.
If you were writing an evaluation report, you wouldn’t be comparing options. Instead, you’d be comparing the thing being evaluated against the requirements placed upon it, or the expectations people had of it. For example, Capital Metro had a program of more than a year of free bus transportation. What was expected of that program? Did the program meet those expectations? The video, 3 Rules for Better Comparison Tables (2019), clarifies the comparative process.
5. SUMMARY TABLE: After the individual comparisons, include a summary table (such as a weighted objectives chart) that summarizes the conclusions from the comparative analysis section. Given the trend to increasing use of visual narrative in reports, some readers are more likely to expect and pay attention to details in a table; however, you still have to write a clear summary paragraph of your findings.
6. CONCLUSIONS: The conclusions section of a feasibility or recommendation report amalgamates all of the conclusions you have already reached in each of the comparison sections. In this section, you restate the individual conclusions, for example, which model had the best price, which had the best battery function, and so on. You could give a summary of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each option based on how well they meet the criteria.
This section has to go further. It must untangle all the conflicting conclusions and somehow reach the final conclusion, which is the one that states which is the best choice. Thus, the conclusion section first lists the primary conclusions—the simple, single-category ones. Then it must state secondary conclusions—the ones that balance conflicting primary conclusions. For example, if one tablet is the least inexpensive but has poor battery function, but another is the most expensive but has good battery function, which do you choose and why? The secondary conclusion would state the answer to this dilemma.
7. RECOMMENDATIONS: The final section of feasibility and recommendation reports states the recommendations, which flow directly from your conclusions and directly address the problem outlined in the introduction. These may sometimes be repetitive, but remember that some readers may skip right to the recommendation section. Also, in some cases where there may be a best choice, you may not want to recommend it. For example, early in their history, laptop computers were heavy and unreliable—one model may have been better than the rest, but even so, it may not have been worth having. You may want to recommend further research, a pilot project, or a re-design of one of the options discussed.
The recommendation section should outline what further work needs to be done, based solidly on the information presented previously in the report and responding directly to the needs outlined in the beginning. In some cases, you may need to recommend several ranked options based on different possibilities.
Figure 10.3.5 outlines all the sections found in a typical feasibility/recommendation report.
Knowledge Check
Revision Checklist for Feasibility and Recommendation Reports
As you reread and revise your feasibility or recommendation report, ensure that you have included all of the sections and elements described below.
| Document Section | Key Content Elements | Check |
| Introductory Sections | Indicate the situation and the audience. | |
| Discuss the background of the problem or opportunity—what brought about the need for the report? Offer some financial background background if necessary. | ||
| State requirements—those factors that influence the decision on the choice of options (objectives and constraints). | ||
| Indicate how the field of options was narrowed to the ones being compared (if relevant). | ||
| Provide a clear purpose statement and an overview of the report contents. | ||
| Discussion Sections | Organize the comparative analysis/discussion of the options using the point-by-point or whole-to-whole approach. Choose the structure that best matches your content and purpose. | |
| At the end of each comparative section, state the best choice in terms that point of comparison. | ||
| Include a table, if possible, in which you summarize all the key data. | ||
| Conclusion | Restate all the key conclusions from the Discussion sections. | |
| State secondary conclusions, and base them on requirements established at the beginning. | ||
| State a final conclusion (about the overall strengths and weaknesses of each option compared). | ||
| Recommendations | Make recommendations for future actions; include actionable steps. | |
| References | Fully document any sources used in the report in a list of references. | |
| Appendices | Add any additional information that has been referred to but not included in the body of the report. |
Knowledge Check
References
Cruthers, A. (2020). Business writing for everyone. https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/businesswriting/chapter/types-of-reports/
Fleming, W. (n.d.) Feasbility reports. Technical writing at LBCC. https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/lbcctechwriting/chapter/7-7-feasibility-reports/
McMurrey, D. (1997-2017). Online technical writing: Examples, cases, and models. https://mcmassociates.io/textbook/feas.html Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
NN Group. (2019). 3 rules for better comparison tables [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f8Kzf3Y_l0
Promac School of Project Management. (2021). Feasibility analysis [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=feasibility+reports