Templates · Analysis
SWOT Analysis
A step back from the sprint, to see what the team is good at, where it is weak, and what around it could help or hurt.
- Strengths Internal advantages the team can rely on
- Weaknesses Internal gaps that cost the team time or quality
- Opportunities External openings worth taking while they are open
- Threats External risks that would hurt if nothing changes
What it is
SWOT sorts what the team knows about its situation into four columns, along two lines: inside or outside the team, helpful or harmful. Strengths and weaknesses belong to the team. Opportunities and threats come from around it: the organisation, users, the market.
Goal
A shared picture of where the team stands, and a short list of moves that follow from it: a strength to use, a weakness to fix, an opening to take, a risk to prepare for.
When to use it
- At a turning point rather than at the end of an ordinary sprint: the start of a quarter or a project, after a reorganisation, when a team forms or takes over a product.
- When the retrospectives keep returning to the same local problems and the team needs to look further out.
When to pick another format
SWOT is too wide for looking back at one sprint: none of its columns asks what happened. Take Went well, To improve, Action ideas or Starfish. If the team is discouraged and a list of weaknesses and threats would weigh on it, SOAR Analysis starts from the same strengths and opportunities and goes on to what the team wants. To find the cause of one problem, use Fishbone Analysis.
How to run it
Name the subject first: the team, a product, a project. Without it, cards land at different scales.
- Strengths: what can we rely on that is ours?
- Weaknesses: what, inside the team, costs us time or quality?
- Opportunities: what is opening around us that we could take while it is open?
- Threats: what outside the team would hurt us if nothing changes?
Cards often land in the wrong half, a weakness written as a threat. When grouping, ask of each card whether it is the team’s own or comes from outside, and move it. Then read across the columns: which strength helps take an opportunity, which weakness makes a threat worse. Those pairings are usually where the actions are. Vote, and give each chosen card an action with an owner.
Columns
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Strengths | Internal advantages the team can rely on |
| Weaknesses | Internal gaps that cost the team time or quality |
| Opportunities | External openings worth taking while they are open |
| Threats | External risks that would hurt if nothing changes |
To start a retrospective from this template, see Create a retro.