What is SWOT Analysis
As you know, every project begins in its current state and aims to reach the future state by bridging the gap. For example, you decided to take an empty niche and create an e-commerce website to sell t-shirts featuring the new hype animation to make a lot of money. To do so, you need to see all three components clearly, and SWOT analysis helps you with the first one – the current state. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats – key components that define the current state on a high level. You can do a SWOT analysis for the entire organization, business branch, marketing strategy, and any IT project.
SWOT Breakdown
Strengths are internal powers we can use to gain an advantage over others, so we build on them and try to get more of them. These could be a strong brand reputation, knowledge, or product quality. Weaknesses are also internal factors that slow us down, such as limited resources, lack of expertise, or destructive processes. We want to get rid of our weaknesses.
Opportunities are external to the project. They could be new technology, a new market, or a new stakeholder to get support from. Threats are also external and may cause trouble for us, such as new competitors, key team members leaving, or budget cuts.
When we look at this matrix, we see two sides. On the left are internal factors we can control and should capitalize on or fix. To the right are external factors we do not control. However, we could influence them by investing in opportunities and foreseeing and avoiding threats.
How to perform SWOT Analysis
As a business analyst, your first step in performing a SWOT analysis is brainstorming bullet points for each quadrant. To cover the internal part, you can pull data from people, documents, processes, and your data analytics if you have it. For example, you can talk to business-level stakeholders to learn about project goals or KPIs. You can also contact your end users to know what they like and dislike about the product. With many sources and tight deadlines, first head to stakeholders closest to your product – customers and end users. Their reality can be different and more relevant than executives’ fantasies.
To analyze external parts, go for global trends, industry, niche, and competitors. For example, new laws come out every day. Sometimes, they may disrupt or change the whole industry. Like in 2018, we stumbled upon GDPR; this year, we have the first AI regulation act that changed the rules. Another example could be your competitor, who just released a new feature and tilted the scales, threatening to steal your customers. As a business analyst who learned about this problem, you must now pitch the scope change to add the same feature to the backlog. In tight deadlines, begin external factors analysis from competitors, as they are always the closest threat and opportunity source.
What is next?
Watch the video below to learn tips on conducting a SWOT Analysis and get an example tutorial.
SWOT Analysis Tutorial
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