Free, editable SWOT analysis templates

As an experienced product manager, I must admit one thing: I have little faith in most frameworks. Very often they sound smart and helpful until you discover they can be used in very few real applications and/or require too specific/hard to obtain pieces of data in order to be useful. However, there are a few exceptions, and SWOT analysis is one of them.

I believe in it so much that I made a class about it in my PM course. I even ran SWOT for it to decide whether to invest time into creating it or not. In this article, you’ll learn what SWOT analysis is, the different variations, and best practices for implementing it within your product team.

What is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis is a framework used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of any initiative. SWOT will help you brainstorm what’s working and what needs improvement during a brainstorming meeting. To get a better sense of each component, let’s take a look at each:

• Strengths — Internal factors that give the business a competitive advantage over its competitors, such as good technology, users’ trust, and strong customer support
• Weaknesses — Internal factors that put the business at a market disadvantage, such as high prices, outdated design, lack of innovation
• Opportunities — External factors that constitute circumstances that can enhance the product and push its success further
• Threats — External factors that create risky conditions for the business with potentially poor consequences

At this point, you might be thinking, great, but what are some potential use cases? SWOT can help you:

• Look at your product as a brainstorming warm-up before figuring out the right problems to address or features to develop
• Evaluate the current state and performance of your business or project and identify the areas of improvement and growth
• Explore new opportunities and markets for your business or project, and assess the feasibility and risks of pursuing them
• Compare your business or project with your competitors and industry standards, and find your competitive advantage and differentiation

Types of SWOT analysis

Besides the main SWOT analysis, there are also variations depending on your particular use case. Some of the most common ones include:

• SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results) — This is a more positive and aspirational analysis that focuses on the vision and goals of the organization, rather than the challenges and threats
• SCORE (strengths, challenges, options, responses, and effectiveness) — A comprehensive and action-oriented analysis that helps identify and prioritize the best solutions and strategies for the organization
• NOISE (needs, opportunities, improvements, strengths, and exceptions) — A customer-centric and improvement-focused analysis that helps understand and address the needs and expectations of the users, as well as the areas of excellence and innovation of the organization
• PEST (political, economic, social, and technological) — An external and environmental analysis that helps assess the macro-level factors and trends that affect the organization and its industry

Free SWOT analysis templates

As you probably already noticed, the key to this framework is its simplicity. While it can help unravel key discoveries or be a great brainstorming exercise, it requires nothing more than filling the S, W, O, and T boxes respectively.

Slides template

If you prefer doing work in Slides, you can utilize the following template:

Sheets template

On the other hand, if Sheets integrates better with your team, you can use this template instead:

SWOT analysis case study

To give you a little context, the story of my teaching career started early in 2019 when I was recovering at home from a biking accident. Since I couldn’t work and felt really bored, I decided to upskill myself as a PM. I started enrolling in different online video courses and quickly discovered my dissatisfaction with them.

Not only did those courses feel way too theoretical, I also thought they wouldn’t help me break into PM if I enrolled in them a few years back. Thus, I decided to create my own and see if my practical and direct approach could make a difference.

Here’s the SWOT analysis I made when setting out to create my course:

Strengths

• Advice based on my own career — This made the course relatable and genuine
• Insights from competitors — I received a lot of praise for not sticking to the theory-based formula
• Professional background — My doctorate and prior work experience helped to build my authority

Weaknesses

• Six years of PM experience — This didn’t feel like enough to sound convincing, although it never became an issue
• First online course — My first videos were terrible, but with time I became really good at creating educational and, dare I say, entertaining videos
• Not an English native speaker — Maybe a few people mentioned they had problems understanding me here and there, but didn’t turn out to be a problem in the end

Opportunities

• The market present for such courses — I believed that there was still a thirst for good product management courses, despite several being available
• Career opportunities — I became a mentor, teacher, writer, ghost-writer and so much more!
• Potential to build more courses — I created a total of six with more planned in the far future

Threats

• Potentially incorrect market research — I could have been wrong all along and the theoretical approach of other tutors was correct
• Too big of a course for the first one — I should have started with something way smaller to run a sensible MVP rather than begin with a 14-hour course that took me a year to develop, rather than a quarter as my initial estimate showed

Final thoughts

As mentioned in the intro, rarely do I believe in any framework, not to mention recommending it. However, when it comes to SWOT, this is clearly a universal and helpful tool that will push you forward and help get the right conversation going in your team.

A final piece of advice would be to use it sporadically. You don’t need to routinely run it, so much as use it when you have a demonstrated need. Good luck developing great products!

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