Templates · Analysis

SOAR Analysis

A forward look built on what works, from the team's strengths and openings to what it wants to achieve and how it will know.

What it is

SOAR starts from what the team does well and builds forward. Two columns describe the present, its strengths and its opportunities; two describe the future, what the team aspires to and the results that would show it got there. There is no column for problems, on purpose.

Goal

A direction the team chose itself, anchored in what it is already good at, with a few measures that will tell whether it is getting closer.

When to use it

• When setting a direction: a new quarter or year, a new team, a product entering a new stage.
• After a hard period, when another list of what is wrong would drain the team more than help it.

When to pick another format

SOAR has no place for what is broken. If real problems are waiting to be named, they stay unsaid or get squeezed into the wrong column: use SWOT Analysis, which keeps the strengths and opportunities and adds weaknesses and threats. For an ordinary sprint, Starfish leads to concrete changes in working habits. When the direction is already set and has to become measurable, go to OKR (Objectives and Key Results).

How to run it

Agree on a horizon before writing, a quarter or a year, so that the cards speak of the same future.

1. Strengths: what do we excel at? Ask for evidence, a moment when it showed.
2. Opportunities: which niches and openings around us can we use?
3. Aspirations: what do we want to achieve by then?
4. Results: how will we measure that the aspirations were achieved? One observable sign per card.

Ask people to spend their votes on Aspirations: a team can carry only a few. In the discussion, for each chosen aspiration, look for the strengths and opportunities that support it and for the cards of Results that would prove it. An aspiration with no result to prove it is not ready to be committed to. The actions are the first steps towards those results, each with an owner.

Columns

To start a retrospective from this template, see Create a retro.