Conducting a SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or business venture.

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What SWOT Is & Why It Matters

A SWOT analysis can be carried out for a product, place, industry, or person. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving that objective.

Setting the objective should be done after the SWOT analysis has been performed. This would allow achievable goals or objectives to be set for the organization.

• Strengths: characteristics of the business or project that give it an advantage over others
• Weaknesses: characteristics that place the team at a disadvantage relative to others
• Opportunities: elements that the project could exploit to its advantage
• Threats: elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business or project

How to Record Your SWOT

1. Under Strategy, choose SWOT in the left menu.
2. Click + in the top right corner or click the + to the right of the type you are adding (e.g.: Strength) and give your item a name. You can also add an optional Source to define where the item came from (e.g.: 2021 or Product Team).
3. Save the SWOT item to see it in your list. 
4. You can drag and drop to reorder the items or recategorize to a different type, click to edit the text, and add Comments or Attachments to each item as needed.
5. You can use the Sort/Filter to show only items from a specific Source or change how the items are sorted in the lists. 

How to Use Your SWOT

We recommend you use the SWOT screen in Rhythm as a building block for other strategic items. Your identified Strengths are often a building block for determining your Core Competencies, which often help you identify what you could be potentially Best In The World at (part of your Hedgehog that will help you determine your BHAG). Similarly, your Opportunities list could be a starting point for brainstorming Winning Moves.

Typically, our facilitators do this exercise with new clients during Annual Planning. If you are new to Rhythm or if you are unsure of strategic areas that you should work on, this exercise might be helpful. Also, you can use it to evaluate a specific opportunity.

If there are opportunities that you'd like to act on from the SWOT exercise,  you can easily convert items from this screen to Goals for execution.