1. The goal: SWOT analysis helps you display strategic information to enhance the decision-making process
2. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
3. It helps to communicate the big picture and gives you room to pitch your vision
Read about the SWOT analysis in this article and find an example below.
The SWOT analysis looks at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This analysis helps you display strategic information in a clear fashion. You can use it to summarize findings of your competition analysis or build scenarios for management decision-making. See also: Mastering Market Analysis: A Comprehensive Guide To to Outshine Competition.
The key to a good SWOT analysis: your message should be concise and clearly communicated.
The graph contains the following sections:
This segment is essentially your value proposition. This is a good time to re-consider your unique selling points and check if your assumptions are still right.
Sum up all the customer feedback and technical issues from the backlog. Also, look at the product features in comparison to competition. What does the end-user want and are they satisfied with your current solution?
Pick up trends and think outside the box. With your research you should be able to interpret your findings and formulate new opportunities. Is your positioning right? What opportunities are the "low hanging fruit"?
Evaluate threats within and outside your company. These threats need to be taken into account and appropriate steps should be initiated to minimize risks.
With SWOT, you as a project or product manager, are able to inform the upper level management / decision makers about your vision and ideas for your project in a clear and concise manner.
A SWOT analysis is a tool to depict strategic information. Usually you want to inform an audience that is not directly involved in your projects, e.g. upper level management, decision-makers. This means that it should be easy to understand and explain the "overall picture". This is also the time where you as a product or project manager can drive your vision and pitch your ideas to management.
Preliminary to creating a SWOT analysis is your data collection. There are several types of data that you can collect: publicly available data, intel from within your organization (e.g. sales and tech support) and other stakeholders. Also, you should consider trends in your industry and try to look at the "big picture" here.
Example: Competition Analysis
In the case of competition analysis for instance, you can use these data sources:
- external data: from competition itself (e.g. instructions manual, marketing material), public databases, congresses
- inside your organization: interviews with sales and tech support staff, product backlog
Make a comprehensive collection of your data. You will end up having a collection of qualitative and quantitative data. Choose an appropriate format for each data type. A good practice is if you summarize all of the data sources and types of data, ideally in a master file.
This type of data usually contains information about features, design aspects and product handling. Also, information from your sales team will be valuable. Make a list and create a summary of findings.
Numbers are best displayed on charts using the appropriate chart type.
Example: Competition Analysis
You have gathered all relevant data and summarized your data in a presentation. For every competitive company, you can make a slide and display general company information (e.g. company size, location, founding year, etc).
Now begins the fun: be creative, be bold.
You have all the intelligence ready. Take time without any interruptions and sort through your data:
1. Divide your data into categories
2. Tag relevant data according to strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
3. Formulate the most important statements
4. Think about creative ways to achieve your company goals
In this example, we have a fictional medical app for fertility tracking. The unique selling point is that we track a variety of body parameters through a smart watch and use a dedicated app to give our female end-users information about their fertility status. Our company is a start-up and has successfully launched two years ago. Our market share is relatively small at 1% and we want to target 5% market share.
From competition analysis, we know we have several competitors. One competitor is the market leader with 30% of market share.
We have done a thorough analysis of the competitor landscape and looked at all angles.
Now we should be able to start discussing in which direction to go. Include the most important internal stakeholders and management in the discussion. Formulate the next action points and schedule a further meeting to strategize.
1. End-user centric product development helps you to create high value products: see the related article End-User Centric Product Development: How it works and top three benefits
2. When to do the SWOT analysis: initiate with your product development. Keep your SWOT analysis updated. Update at least once a year.
3. The SWOT analysis is only one component of your strategic planning. Use it as a tool for discussion.
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