SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis helps you identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with competitors, peers or within your own business.
Why should we do this exercise?
It's important to understand the market that we are designing for, so before we start the sprint we should analyse key areas of competitors in a way that easy to explain and understand for the whole team.
Instructions
- Make a list of competitors, peers, and inspirational prodcuts or companies.
- Against each one list items against the following headings:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
- Compile the lists into a single document that can be shared later.
Strengths
Strengths are things that we consider the company or product to be particularly good at. To help find these try asking these questions:
- What do they do well?
- What are they the best at?
- What is something unique to them?
- What do the target audience think of them?
For example: "Simple onboarding", "personalised customer support", "seen as modern and innovative" are all strengths.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses are things that we consider the company or product to be lacking in or bad at. To help find these try asking these questions:
- What to they need to improve?
- What is the weakest part of the experience?
- What is something that performs badly?
- What do the target audience complain about or criticise?
For example: "Long waiting times", "lack of persoanlity", "Users complain about lost items" are all weaknesses.
Opportunities
Opportunities are things that we think that the company or product could be taking advantage of. To help find these try asking these questions:
- What could they do to improve their weaknesses?
- What do they lack?
- What do the target audience ask for regularly?
For example: "Opening registrations to everyone", "more transparent pricing", "People often request to be able to edit their posts" are all opportunities.
Threats
Threats are things that we think have the potential to cause problems for the company or product. To help find these try asking these questions:
- What changes are coming to the industry that could cause a problem?
- Where are others out performing?
- Who is their closest competitor?
For example: "From next year it's going to be easier to start a new provider", "Their peer have been hiring aggresively", "A new competitor is growing fast" are all threats.