business planning techniques and tools

9 Strategic Planning Models and Tools for the Customer-Focused Business

Published: July 11, 2023

As the economist and business strategy guru, Michael Porter, says, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

With strategic planning, businesses identify their strengths and weaknesses, choose what not to do, and determine which opportunities should be pursued. In sales operations, having a clearly defined strategy will help your organization plan for the future, set viable goals, and achieve them.

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So, how do you get started with strategic planning? You‘ll begin with strategic planning models and tools. Let’s take a look at nine of the most prominent ones here.

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Strategic planning models.

Strategic planning is used to set up long-term goals and priorities for an organization. A strategic plan is a written document that outlines these goals.

Don't confuse strategic planning and tactical planning . Strategic planning is focused on long-term goals, while tactical planning is focused on the short-term.

Here are a few strategic planning models you can use to get started.

1. The Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is one of the most prominent strategic planning models, tailored to give managers a comprehensive overview of their companies' operations on tight timelines. It considers both financial and operational metrics to provide valuable context about how a business has performed previously, is currently performing, and is likely to perform in the future.

The model plays on these concerns: time, quality, performance/service, and cost. The sum of those components amount to four specific reference points for goal-setting and performance measurement:

• Customer: How customers view your business
• Internal Process: How you can improve your internal processes
• Organizational Capacity: How your business can grow, adapt, and improve
• Financial: The potential profitability of your business

Those four categories can inform goals that are more thoughtful and focused while surfacing the most appropriate metrics with which you can use to track them. But the elements you choose to pursue and measure are ultimately up to you. As there's no definitive list, they will vary from organization to organization.

That being said, there‘s a universally applicable technique you can use when leveraging the model—creating a scorecard. This is a document that keeps track of your goals and how you apply them. Here’s an example of what a scorecard might look like:

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The Balanced Scorecard is ideal for businesses looking to break up higher-level goals into more specific, measurable objectives. If you're interested in translating your big-picture ambitions into actionable projects, consider looking into a Balanced scorecard software .

Example of the Balanced Scorecard

Let‘s imagine a B2B SaaS company that sells a construction management solution. It’s been running into trouble from virtually all angles. It‘s struggling with customer retention and, in turn, is hemorrhaging revenue. The company’s sales reps are working with very few qualified leads and the organization's tech stack is limiting growth and innovation.

The business decides to leverage a Balanced Scorecard approach to remedy its various issues. In this case, the full strategic plan—developed according to this model—might look like this:

• The company sets a broad financial goal of boosting revenue by 10% year over year.
• To help get there, it aims to improve its customer retention rate by 5% annually by investing in a more robust customer service infrastructure.
• Internally, leadership looks to improve the company's lead generation figures by 20% year over year by revamping its onboarding process for its pre-sales team.
• Finally, the business decides to move on from its legacy tech stack in favor of a virtualized operating system, making for at least 50% faster software delivery for consistent improvements to its product.

The elements listed above address key flaws in the company‘s customer perception, internal processes, financial situation, and organizational capacity. Every improvement the business is hoping to make involves a concrete goal with clearly outlined metrics and definitive figures to gauge each one’s success. Taken together, the organization's plan abides by the Balanced Scorecard model.

2. Objectives and Key Results

As its name implies, the OKR (objectives and key results) strategic planning model revolves around translating broader organizational goals into objectives and tracking their key results. The framework rests on identifying three to five attainable objectives and three to five results that should stem from each of them. Once you have those in place, you plan tactical initiatives around those results.

After you‘ve figured out those reference points, you determine the most appropriate metrics for measuring their success. And once you’ve carried out the projects informed by those ideal results, you gauge their success by giving a score on a scale from 0 to 1 or 0%-100%.

For instance, your goal might be developing relationships with 100 new targets or named accounts in a specific region. If you only were able to develop 95, you would have a score of .95 or 95%. Here's an example of what an OKR model might look like:

It's recommended that you structure your targets to land at a score of around 70% — taking some strain off workers while offering them a definitive ideal outcome. The OKR model is relatively straightforward and near-universally applicable. If your business is interested in a way to work towards firmly established, readily visible standards this model could work for you.

Example of the Objectives and Key Results

Let's consider a hypothetical company that makes educational curriculum and schedule planning for higher-education institutions. The company decides it would like to expand its presence in the community college system in California, something that constitutes an objective.

But what will it take to accomplish that? And how will the company know if it's successful? Well, in this instance, leadership within the business would get there by establishing three to five results they would like to see. Those could be:

• Generating qualified leads from 30 institutions
• Conducting demos at 10 colleges
• Closing deals at 5 campuses

Those results would lead to initiatives like setting standards for lead qualification and training reps at the top of the funnel on how to use them appropriately, revamping sales messaging for discovery calls, and conducting research to better tailor the demo process to the needs of community colleges.

Leveraging this model generally entails repeating that process between two and four more times, ultimately leading to a sizable crop of thorough, actionable, ambitious, measurable, realistic plans.

3. Theory of Change (TOC)

The Theory of Change (TOC) model revolves around organizations establishing long-term goals and essentially “working backward” to accomplish them. When leveraging the strategy, you start by setting a larger, big-picture goal.

Then, you identify the intermediate-term adjustments and plans you need to make to achieve your desired outcome. Finally, you work down a level and plan the various short-term changes you need to make to realize the intermediate ones. More specifically, you need to take these strides:

• Identify your long-term goals.
• Backward map the preconditions necessary to achieve your goal, and explain why they're necessary.
• Identify your basic assumptions about the situation.
• Determine the interventions your initiative will fulfill to achieve your goals.
• Come up with indicators to evaluate the performance of your initiative.
• Write an explanation of the logic behind your initiative.

Here's another visualization of what that looks like.

This planning model works best for organizations interested in taking on endeavors like building a team, planning an initiative, or developing an action plan. It's distinct from other models in its ability to help you differentiate between desired and actual outcomes. It also makes stakeholders more actively involved in the planning process by making them model exactly what they want out of a project.

It relies on more pointed detail than similar models. Stakeholders generally need to lay out several specifics, including information related to the company's target population, how success will be identified, and a definitive timeline for every action and intervention planned. Again, virtually any organization — be it public, corporate, nonprofit, or anything else — can get a lot out of this strategy model.

Example of the Theory of Change

For the sake of this example, imagine a business that makes HR Payroll Software , but hasn‘t been doing too well as of late. Leadership at the company feels directionless. They think it’s time to buckle down and put some firm plans in motion, but right now, they have some big picture outcomes in mind for the company without a feel for how they're going to get done.

In this case, the business might benefit from leveraging the Theory of Change model. Let‘s say its ultimate goal is to expand its market share. Leadership would then consider the preconditions that would ultimately lead to that goal and why they’re relevant.

For instance, one of those preconditions might be tapping into a new customer base without alienating its current one. The company could make an assumption like, “We currently cater to mid-size businesses almost exclusively, and we lack the resources to expand up-market to enterprise-level prospects. We need to find a way to more effectively appeal to small businesses.”

Now, the company can start looking into the specific initiatives it can take to remedy its overarching problem. Let's say it only sells its product at a fixed price point that suits midsize businesses much more than smaller ones. So the company decides that it should leverage a tiered pricing structure that offers a limited suite of features at a price that small businesses and startups can afford.

The factors the company elects to use as reference points for the plan's success are customer retention and new user acquisition. Once those have been established, leadership would explain why the goals, plans, and metrics it has outlined make sense.

If you track the process I‘ve just plotted, you’ll see the Theory of Change in motion. It starts with a big-picture goal and works its way down to specific initiatives and ways to gauge their effectiveness.

4. Hoshin Planning

The Hoshin Planning model is a process that aims to reduce friction and inefficiency by promoting active and open communication throughout an organization. In this model, everyone within an organization—regardless of department or seniority—is made aware of the company's goals.

Hoshin Planning rests on the notion that thorough communication creates cohesion, but that takes more than contributions from leadership. This model requires that results from every level be shared with management.

The ideal outcomes set according to this model are also conceived of by committee to a certain extent. Hoshin Planning involves management hearing and considering feedback from subordinates to come up with reasonable, realistic, and mutually understood goals.

The model is typically partitioned into seven steps:

• establishing a vision
• developing breakthrough objectives
• developing annual objectives
• deploying annual objectives
• implementing annual objectives
• conducting monthly and quarterly reviews
• conducting an annual review.

Note: The first three steps are referred to as the “catchball process.” It's where company leadership sets goals and establishes strategic plans to send down the food chain for feedback and new ideas. That stage is what really separates Hoshin Planning from other models.

Example of Hoshin Planning

For this example, let‘s imagine a company that manufactures commercial screen printing machines. The business has seen success with smaller-scale, retail printing operations, but realizes that selling almost exclusively to that market won’t make for long-term, sustainable growth.

Leadership at the company decides that it's interested in making an aggressive push to move up-market towards larger enterprise companies. However, before they can establish that vision, they want to ensure that the entire company is willing and able to work with them to reach those goals.

Once they‘ve set a tentative vision, they begin to establish more concrete objectives and send them down the management hierarchy. One of the most pressing activities they’re interested in pursuing is a near-comprehensive product redesign to make their machines better suited for higher volume orders.

They communicate those goals throughout the organization and ask for feedback along the way. After the product team hears their ideal plans, it relays that the product overhaul that leadership is looking into isn‘t viable within the timeframe they’ve provided. Leadership hears this and adjusts their expectations before doling out any sort of demands for the redesign.

Once both parties agree on a feasible timeline, they begin to set more definitive objectives that suit both the company‘s ambitions and the product team’s capabilities.

Strategic Plan Example

The strategic plan above is for a fictitious shoe company and outlines the way in which it'll differentiate itself within the market. It effectively uses each step in the strategic planning model framework and is written in a way to give a brief overview of how the company will enter the market and sustain longevity.

If you're working on a strategic planning model for an existing business, your plan will look similar, but have a few tweaks to the goals, including more goals about improving sales and processes. When drafting the action plan and evaluation parts of the plan, be sure to think tactically about the actions that will help you achieve the goals, and use your mission, vision, and values to guide the choices you make.

Strategic Planning Tools

There are additional resources you can use to support whatever strategic planning model you put in place. Here are some of those:

1. SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool and acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It's used to identify each of these elements in relation to your business.

This strategic planning tool allows you to determine new opportunities and which areas of your business need improvement. You'll also identify any factors or threats that might negatively impact your business or success.

2. Porter's Five Forces

Use Porter‘s Five Forces as a strategic planning tool to identify the economic forces that impact your industry and determine your business’ competitive position. The five forces include:

• Competition in the industry
• Potential of new entrants into the industry
• Power of suppliers
• Power of customers
• Threat of substitute products

To learn more, check out this comprehensive guide to using Porter's Five Forces .

3. Visioning

Visioning is a goal-setting strategy used in strategic planning. It helps your organization develop a vision for the future and the outcomes you'd like to achieve.

Once you reflect on the goals you‘d like to reach within the next five years or more, you and your team can identify the steps you need to take to get where you’d like to be. From there, you can create your strategic plan.

4. PESTLE Analysis

The PESTLE analysis is another strategic planning tool you can use. It stands for:

• P: Political
• E: Economic
• T: Technological
• E: Environmental

Each of these elements allow an organization to take stock of the business environment they're operating in, which helps them develop a strategy for success. Use a PESTLE Analysis template to help you get started.

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7 Proven Planning Techniques for Better Projects

A project without a plan is like a car without a driver. The project plan is the guide that gets a project manager from concept through execution, and a finished product at its destination. There’s an argument that a project plan supersedes everything else in a project.

While that’s a bit of an overstatement, it does prove the rhetorical point that planning for a project is crucial. Therefore, whether you’re new to project management or a journeyman with years of experience under your belt, there’s always more planning tools and techniques to learn.

There are possibly as many planning methods as there are projects, so we boiled down the potential pot of planning techniques to seven essential ingredients that will make your next project plan a feast for your team and stakeholders.

1. Critical Path Analysis

Planning a simple project has its hurdles to clear: but when that project is complex, then planning can feel almost insurmountable. That’s where a planning technique such as critical path analysis comes in handy. It is a planning method designed to address projects with many tasks, especially when there are those that are done at the same time and are dependent on one another.

Critical path analysis will help you determine if some tasks can run parallel, what the sequence of tasks should be, as well as prioritize them. This takes a complicated project and finds the most efficient path through it. That’s because critical path analysis follows a timeline that shows where tasks are in the schedule and what must be done when.

There are three steps to critical path analysis:

• Write out all the tasks on a project timeline
• Identify which of those tasks must occur at the same time
• Note the task dependencies

This timeline will now expose the spots in the project that need more resources and those that are most important to keep the project on track.

2. Brainstorming

Brainstorming can be looked at as the plan before the plan. A plan for anything is a way to organize an approach. But before that can be done well, the project must be clearly understood and the various techniques to manage it examined. Brainstorming is a tool that uses the collective experience and skills of the project team in order to give project managers the full picture before they attempt to frame it in a plan.

Therefore, brainstorming should be the first step in any planning technique. It is a creative and lateral way of thinking that can help identify project risk and other concerns that are not immediately apparent. There will be time to formalize a plan and add the needed structure that every project rests on to reach a successful end. The creative nature of a brainstorming session, and the fact that it’s contrary to typical project management methodology, make it a highly revealing planning technique.

The only trouble is that people who excel in project management are often the types who work best within a template. Getting them to think “outside the box” can prove a challenge. But it will help your project and your team expand their own resources. Don’t forget to get stakeholders and other experts in on the brainstorming, too.

Related: How to Create a Project Plan

3. Work Breakdown Structure

Another great project planning method is the work breakdown structure (WBS), which is a way to rank tasks in the project. Again, when a project is great in scope it helps to get a handle on it, which is where the WBS comes in. As the name implies, the WBS breaks down the larger project into manageable tasks. It’s like putting something in a crucible and breaking it down to its primary elements.

Begin with the project, then start breaking it down: first into phases and then from those milestones, into tasks. In a sense, you’re starting at the end of the project and working backwards. The breakdown is considering the size of the task, how long it will take and who will be responsible for that task. You can use our free work breakdown structure template to get started.

Think of the WBS as a framework for planning. It provides a picture of all the pieces of the project puzzle. With this knowledge, a project manager has the big picture and the smaller parts that make it up, so they can now act to control the project over the course of its life cycle. From the WBS, a statement of work will develop, as well as scheduling, budget and other resources.

4. Gantt Chart

The old standby for project planning is the Gantt chart. For decades, the Gantt chart has been included in the feature set of a slew of project management software platforms, which has given it a flexibility that emphasizes its many positive attributes.

ProjectManager.com has an online Gantt chart that allows you to upload your task list from any Excel or CSV spreadsheet or even an MS Project file. Once that task list is uploaded, and you set the column names, the tasks populate the left-hand side of the Gantt chart, which is an outline for the entire project. Adding start and end dates create a line across that timeline illustrating the task’s duration.

If a task is dependent on another, it can be linked, so that team members are aware of the task dependency and aren’t blocked. This also avoids bottlenecks in the schedule, as email notifications can be set to automatically alert team members of coming deadlines. That keeps the project on track.

Once the project has been planned, the Gantt chart keeps on giving. With ProjectManager.com, our online Gantt chart gives the project manager the ability to assign the tasks. It is also a collaboration platform, allowing those assigned team members to freely communicate in comments, where they can attach files and images. They are notified of these comments in real-time, so the team can communicate no matter where or at what time. Try this planning technique today with a free trial of ProjectManager.com.

5. Cause and Effect Diagram

This planning technique was created by Kaoru Ishikawa, a Japanese organizational theorist, to show the causes of an event. It is also called an Ishikawa or fishbone diagram.

It gathers and identifies issues that can develop over the course of a project. By doing so, this planning method helps project managers figure out solutions to those problems. There is risk inherent in every project, and planning against those risks is another way to make sure the project proceeds as planned, without costly interruptions.

The cause and effect diagram has a central backbone from which bones are drawn that represent any major factor that might impact the final outcome of the project. It can be used to take those issues that came up during a brainstorming session and organize them.

The factors that could impact the project (or the bones that come from the backbone) could be equipment or other resources, a legal problem, new technology, training, etc. Each of these bones is then divided into even smaller bones to get a full view of the cause and effect they might have on a project and its plan.

Program evaluation and review technique or PERT is a tool to help project managers estimate the amount of time a project will likely take. Scheduling is one of the pillars of planning techniques, so you can see the importance of having a planning method like PERT to make your schedule more accurate.

The more variables you can control, the better your outcome when estimating. But there are so many unknowns when dealing with a project that it can feel impossible to hit your target. But that’s just what PERT does: it manages the complex probability of a project with simple statistical methods.

With PERT, tasks are broken down like with the WBS, but adding these activities to a Gantt chart to link the task dependencies. This creates a map of the project’s interdependencies. Each of the task are then given a time-to-complete estimation: optimistic (O), being the quickest it will take to complete the task; mostly likely (M), the required deadline; or pessimistic (P), being the most time it will take.

E, being the expected time for each task, is derived by the equation: E = (O + 4M + P)/6. The variance is found by solving this equation: V= [(P – O)/ 6] ^2. When the E and V for every task is calculated, the total Es is an accurate time estimation for the project. The added Vs show the expected variance.

7. SMART Goals

Another acronym that can help with your planning methods is SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. What SMART does when in the planning process of a project is making sure, before you start, that your goals fit within the SMART criteria.

That means that they should be specific, as in clear and concise. They must also be measurable, so you can quantify your project. Attainable is obvious, in that if the project is a pie-in-the-sky impossibility then the odds are it’s going to fail.

The last two initials are for relevant, which speaks to the project’s goals being aligned with the overall business strategy of the organization, and time bound, as in having a deadline. If your project meets all these points, then you can start planning.

ProjectManager.com is a cloud-based project management software that makes planning a snap. It not only uploads spreadsheets and MS Project files, but once in the software, they’re easily shared and updated instantly, for a more collaborative platform. The real-time dashboard keeps project managers and teams updated and makes reporting to stakeholders easy. See for yourself by taking this free 30-day trial.

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20 Essential Strategic Frameworks & Models Every Manager Needs to Know

Ted Jackson

Ted is a Founder and Managing Partner of ClearPoint Strategy and leads the sales and marketing teams.

Master these 20 strategic frameworks and models to build a robust strategy foundation for your business's success.

Table of Contents

Strategic frameworks are designed to help organizations develop an action plan to achieve their goals. There are a lot of strategic planning models out there, which is why we pulled together a list of 20 of the most popular ones and describe the scenario that they are most useful.

A strategic framework is a structure designed to help organizations develop an action plan to achieve their goals. This entails using various strategic planning models to guide the organization toward effective strategy implementation and goal realization, tailored to specific scenarios where they are most effective.

Essentially, it serves as a blueprint that organizations follow to map out their strategic direction and actions required to achieve their objectives.

Do any of these situations sound familiar?

• The strategy at your organization is nonexistent, and you’re assigned to find a strategic planning model so that you can kick off your strategic planning process.
• Your company-wide strategy is in place, but entirely ineffective—and you have a hunch that using a strategic planning model (and strategy software ) will make a big difference.
• Your organization-wide strategy is fine, but there’s one area in your business environment (or internal process) that needs to be realigned with your strategy.

If you can identify with one of these scenarios, this article is for you!

Read through each of the models or find the ones you're looking for from the list below and jump right to them. Then stick around for some insight on how you can make the most of whatever strategic framework you choose—and increase the likelihood of its success. (Hint: It’s all about performance tracking.)

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Is one strategic planning model better than the others.

That’s a great question—and the answer isn’t cut and dried. Some of these frameworks have been around longer than others, or have been used in various case studies in different ways. And sometimes managers are more comfortable with one over another, for any number of reasons.

We recommend determining which of these strategic planning models applies most to your organization’s way of thinking. For example, if you still need to work out your vision statement, it may be wise to begin with the VRIO framework and then move to something like the Balanced Scorecard to track and manage your ongoing strategy.

If you are set on pitching a particular strategic planning model to management, be prepared to give your boss or board of directors an example of another successful company that has utilized that particular model. An actual demonstration of success will make a somewhat abstract concept become more concrete.

If you are evaluating different approaches, I would recommend thinking about both creating your strategic plan and also executing on your plan. It doesn’t do you any good to have a strategic plan and not put it to use.

Is There Ever a Need to Switch Strategic Planning Models?

Yes. As your organization grows and changes, the frameworks you use to manage your strategy will change too.

There are a lot of options out there—even more than the 20 we’ve explored above! It’s reasonable to expect that the framework you use today won't necessarily match your organization’s needs 10 or even five years from now.

The added complexities of a growing business may make it necessary to rethink your approach to strategy planning. For example, the Balanced Scorecard might work well for tracking organizational and departmental plans, but you may eventually want a system that easily extends to the individual level. For that, you might add OKRs to your management framework.

You can also combine strategic planning models. Some organizations use elements of two or more frameworks to create a custom approach. Great! Every organization manages differently; your planning model should reflect your approach. But it’s always easier to have a starting point, which is why these frameworks exist in the first place.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch a quick DEMO on the software.

1. balanced scorecard.

The Balanced Scorecard is a strategy management framework created by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton (who the founders of ClearPoint, Ted and Dylan, worked with for over 10 years). It takes into account your:

• Objectives , which are high-level organizational goals.
• Measures , which help you understand if you’re accomplishing your objective strategically.
• Initiatives , which are key action programs that help you achieve your objectives.

There are many ways you can create a Balanced Scorecard, including using a program like Excel , Google Sheets, or PowerPoint or using reporting software.

At a glance, you can tell what the RAG status of each objective, measure, or initiative is. (Green indicates everything is going as planned, while yellow and red indicate that there are various degrees of trouble with whatever is being looked at.)

All in all, a Balanced Scorecard is an effective, proven way to get your team on the same page with your strategy. Read more about the BSC in our blog on A Full & Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example.

Claim your FREE Balanced Scorecard Excel template for better strategic management here

2. strategy maps.

A strategy map is a visual tool designed to clearly communicate a strategic plan and achieve high-level business goals.

Strategy mapping is a major part of the Balanced Scorecard (though it isn’t exclusive to the BSC) and offers an excellent way to communicate the high-level information across your organization in an easily-digestible format. A strategy map offers a host of benefits:

• It provides a simple, clean, visual representation that is easily referred back to.
• It unifies all goals into a single strategy.
• It gives every employee a clear goal to keep in mind while accomplishing tasks and measures.
• It helps identify your key goals.
• It allows you to better understand which elements of your strategy need work.
• It helps you see how your objectives affect the others.

Read our blog on A Strategy Map Template For Medium-Sized Companies.

Get your FREE eBook with Balanced Scorecard strategy maps for better strategic visualization

3. swot analysis.

A SWOT analysis (or SWOT matrix) is a high-level model used at the beginning of an organization’s strategic planning. It is an acronym for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” Strengths and weaknesses are considered internal factors , and opportunities and threats are considered external factors .

Using a SWOT analysis as part of your strategic business model helps an organization identify where they’re doing well and in what areas they can improve.

With ClearPoint Strategy , you can use AI to perform a SWOT analysis on your company. Try our SWOT AI tool here.

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4. pest model.

Like SWOT, PEST is also an acronym—it stands for Ppolitical, Economic, Sociocultural, and Technological.” Each of these factors is used to look at an industry or business environment, and determine what could affect an organization’s health.

The PEST model is often used in conjunction with the external factors of a SWOT analysis. You may also run into Porter’s Five Forces (see #7 below), which is a similar take on examining your business from various angles.

You’ll occasionally see the PEST model with a few extra letters added on. For example, PESTEL (or PESTLE) indicates an organization is also considering “environmental” and “legal” factors. STEEPLED is another variation, which stands for “sociocultural, technological economic, environmental, political, legal, education, and demographic.”

Claim your FREE eBook on 8 effective strategic planning templates here

5. gap planning.

Gap planning is also referred to as a “Need- Gap Analysis ,” “Need Assessment,” or “the Strategic-Planning Gap.” It is used to compare where an organization is now, where it wants to be, and how to bridge the gap between. It is primarily used to identify specific internal deficiencies.

In your gap planning research, you may also hear about a “change agenda” or “shift chart.” These are similar to gap planning, as they both take into consideration the difference between where you are now and where you want to be along various axes. From there, your planning process is about how to ‘close the gap.’

The chart below, for example, demonstrates the difference between the projected and desired sales of a mock company:

6. Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is a strategic planning model that emerged in a book by the same name in 2005. The book—titled “Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant”—was written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, professors at the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD).

The idea behind Blue Ocean Strategy is for organizations to develop in “uncontested market space” (e.g. a blue ocean) instead of a market space that is either developed or saturated (e.g. a red ocean). If your organization is able to create a blue ocean, it can mean a massive value boost for your company, its buyers, and its employees.

For example, Kim and Mauborgne explain via their 2004 Harvard Business Review article how Cirque du Soleil didn’t attempt to operate as a normal circus, and instead carved out a niche for itself that no other circus had ever tried.

7. Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces is an older strategy execution framework (created by Michael Porter in 1979) built around the forces that impact the profitability of an industry or a market. The five forces it examines are:

• The threat of entry : Could other companies enter the marketplace easily, or are there numerous entry barriers they would have to overcome?
• The threat of substitute products or services : Can buyers easily replace your product with another?
• The bargaining power of customers : Could individual buyers put pressure on your organization to, say, lower costs?
• The bargaining power of suppliers : Could large retailers put pressure on your organization to drive down the cost?
• The competitive rivalry among existing firms : Are your current competitors poised for major growth? If one launches a new product or files a new patent—could that impact your company?

The amount of pressure on each of these forces can help you determine how future events will impact the future of your company.

See a strategic planning model that fits your business? Claim your FREE eBook on 8 effective strategic planning templates here.

8. vrio framework.

The VRIO framework is an acronym for “ v alue, r arity, i mitability, o rganization.” This strategic planning process relates more to your vision statement than your overall strategy. The ultimate goal in implementing the VRIO model is that it will result in a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Here’s how to think of each of the four VRIO components:

• Value: Are you able to exploit an opportunity or neutralize an outside threat using a particular resource?
• Rarity: Is there a great deal of competition in your market, or do only a few companies control the resource referred to above?
• Imitability: Is your organization’s product or service easily imitated, or would it be difficult for another organization to do so?
• Organization: Is your company organized enough to be able to exploit your product or resource?

Once you answer these four questions, you’ll be able to formulate a more precise vision statement to help carry you through all the additional strategic elements in your plan.

Want to use the VRIO Framework ?  Download a FREE set of strategic planning templates here.

9. baldrige framework.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is “the highest level of national recognition for performance excellence that a U.S. organization can receive.” Created in 1987, the goal of Baldrige is to help organizations innovate and improve, while achieving their mission and vision.

The award is currently open to manufacturing, service, small business, nonprofit, government, education, and healthcare sectors. When applying to win the Baldrige award at the national level, organizations undergo a competitive process that involves the implementation of the Baldrige framework.

The framework outlines the “Baldrige Criteria For Performance Excellence,” where organizations must demonstrate achievement and improvement to an independent board of examiners in these seven areas:

• Planning and strategy
• Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management

To implement the Baldrige framework in your organization, start with two questionnaires that help you self-assess based on the seven Baldrige Criteria categories, and get a snapshot of your strengths and opportunities for improvement.

10. OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)

The strategic planning model of choice for Google, Intel, Spotify, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other Silicon Valley successes, the OKR framework , is one of the more straightforward strategic planning tools. It’s designed to create alignment and engagement around measurable goals by clearly defining:

• Objectives: What you want to achieve. Choose three to five objectives that are brief, inspiring, and time-bound.
• Key Results: How you’ll measure progress toward your achievements. Set three to five key results (they must be quantitative) per objective.

The strategic planning model of choice for many businesses—including Google, Intel, Spotify, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many other Silicon Valley successes— the OKR framework is also effective because goals are continually set, tracked, and re-evaluated so organizations can quickly adapt when needed.

This is a fast-paced, iterative approach that flips the traditional top-down strategic models. The RACI matrix is a helpful visual for defining the role each person in your organization has for projects and processes, ensuring it aligns with their OKRs.

Want to try out OKRs? Take the OKR Test Drive and let our AI Assistant help you draft your OKRs.

11. hoshin planning.

The Hoshin Planning approach aligns your strategic goals with your projects and tasks to ensure that efforts are coordinated. This strategic management model is less focused on measures and more on goals and initiatives.

Some sources cite up to seven steps in the Hoshin Planning model, but the four most critical are:

• Identify key goals : Ideally you’d focus on three to five goals.
• Play “catchball” : Share goals from top to bottom of your organization to obtain buy-in.
• Gather intel through “gemba” : Track the execution of your key goals and gather feedback from employees, using a defined process.
• Make adjustments : Initiate change based on feedback and repeat the steps of catchball and gemba.

You visualize your objectives, measures and targets, measure programs, and action items in a Hoshin Planning matrix. Four directional quadrants (north, south, east, west) inform each other and demonstrate alignment.

12. Issue-Based Strategic Planning

The issue-based strategic model is oriented in the present and projects into the future. It aims to identify the major challenges your organization faces now —in other words, you start with the problems to iron out issues before expanding, shifting your strategy, etc.

This is typically a short-term (6-12 months), internally-focused process. Issue-based planning is ideal for young or resource-restricted organizations. The leadership team or stakeholders identify the major issues and goals as a first step. Next, your organization will create action plans to address the issues, including budget allocation.

From there, you will execute and track progress. After an issues-based plan has been implemented and the major issues you identified are resolved, then your organization might consider shifting to a broader, more complex strategic management model.

13. Goal-Based Strategic Planning

Goal-based strategic planning is the reverse of issue-based. This approach works backward from the future to the present. It all starts with your organization’s vision.

By nature, vision statements are aspirational and forward-thinking, but they need specifics in order to be realized. Goal-based planning tackles that challenge by setting measurable goals that align with your vision and strategic plan.

Next, you define time frames for goal achievement. This is a long-term strategic planning tool, so goal time frames are typically about three to five years. From there, stakeholders will create action plans for each goal and begin tracking and measuring progress.

You want your department to be able to see their goals and the steps to achieve them. Download our Department Business Plan Dashboard template here.

14. alignment strategic planning model.

Similar to issue-based planning, the alignment model focuses on first looking internally to develop a strategy. This model is designed to sync the organization’s internal operations with its strategic goals.

Your strategic planning will start by identifying a goal and analyzing which operations or resources need to be aligned with that goal. Then you’ll identify which parts of operations are working well and which are not, brainstorming ideas from the successful aspects on how to address problems. Finally, you’ll create a series of proposed changes to operations or processes to achieve goals that will create the desired strategic alignment.

The alignment strategic planning model is particularly useful when a company needs to refine its objectives or address ongoing challenges or inefficiencies that are blocking progress.

15. Organic Model Of Strategic Planning

The organic model takes an unconventional approach because it focuses on the organization’s vision and values, versus plans and processes. With this model, a company uses “natural,” self-organizing systems that originate from its values and then leverages its own resources to achieve goals, conserve funds, and operate effectively.

In the simplest form, there are three basic steps to follow when implementing the organic model of strategic planning:

• Stakeholders clarify vision and values : This is a collaborative process that could involve both external and internal stakeholders—who’s in the meeting depends entirely on your organization’s ultimate purpose for the planning. The goal is to establish common visions and values for all stakeholders.
• Stakeholders create personal action plans : The unconventional aspect of this model comes into play here. Divided into small groups, stakeholders determine the actions and responsibilities for each person to work toward the vision (according to the values).
• Stakeholders report results of action plans : Each person will take ownership of their plan and update the group on their progress. This is a communal approach to accountability and the progress reported can lean toward qualitative, versus quantitative, results.

What type of company would the organic strategic planning model work best for? If your organization has a large, diverse group of stakeholders that need to find common ground, a vision that will take a long time to achieve, and a strong strategic emphasis on vision and values (instead of structure and procedures), this may be the right model for you.

It would also be beneficial for younger organizations that need to gain funding without presenting a formal strategic plan.

16. Real-Time Strategic Planning

Similar to the organic model, real-time strategic planning is a fluid, nontraditional system. It’s primarily used by organizations that need to be more reactive, and perform strategic planning in “real time.”

For these companies, detailed, long-term plans tend to become irrelevant within the typical three- to five-year planning cycle because the environment they operate in rapidly changes. Many nonprofits use this model—for example, a disaster relief agency needs the ability to respond quickly and adapt its strategy to immediately address a crisis.

Real-time strategic planning involves three levels of strategy: organizational, programmatic, and operational. For the first level, you’ll define the organization’s mission, vision, market position, competitors, trends, etc. Then, the programmatic strategy requires research into the external environment to identify approaches and offerings that would help the organization achieve its mission.

The research should cover opportunities, threats, competitive advantages, and other points to spur strategic brainstorming.

The final operational level analyzes internal processes, systems, and personnel to develop a strategy that addresses “in-house” strengths and weaknesses. Looking at all three levels as a whole, strategy leaders can form criteria for developing, testing, implementing, and adapting strategies on an ongoing basis, allowing for quick and thoughtful responses when needed.

17. Scenario Planning

In planning for their own future, too few organizations take the time to consider the multitude of external changes that could take place that would impact their plans.

A healthcare company that fails to anticipate certain regulatory actions, an energy company that ignores the possibility of rising oil prices, and a global organization that hasn’t examined the potential for supply chain disruptions may all be impacted by those changes to some degree if they happened. And it isn’t just about mitigating the possible risks; it’s also about pursuing potential opportunities.

Scenario planning involves examining the variable elements of your environment, evaluating them for plausibility and impact, and factoring those scenarios that are most relevant into your decision-making. Two to five scenarios is the ideal number—this lets you explore a variety of themes without getting mired down in too many possibilities.

Other frameworks (like SWOT or PESTLE ) can be useful in developing those scenarios.

You can use scenario planning at the individual and departmental levels, but it is especially useful for organizational strategy planning. If your company is part of an industry that tends to be volatile or your organization itself has had to navigate costly, unexpected changes in the past, scenario planning is an excellent tool for developing your strategic vision.

It can also be used to foster managerial thinking, encouraging leaders to consider the broadest range of future possibilities, and provide guidance when evaluating new projects or investment proposals.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to schedule a FREE 1:1 demo.

18. ansoff matrix.

The Ansoff Matrix was developed to help organizations plan their strategies for growth. It is a 2x2 matrix with product on one axis and markets on the other axis. Depending on the box you are in, you may choose a different strategy for growth:

• Market penetration : Expand sales of an existing product in an existing market
• Product development : Introduce a new product into an existing market
• Market development : Introduce an existing product into an entirely new market
• Diversification : Introduce a new product into a new market

The level of risk increases with each strategy, with market penetration being the least risky and diversification being the most risky.

The Ansoff Matrix is useful for organizations that are actively trying to grow. Not only does it help you analyze and clarify your current strategy, but it also helps evaluate the risks associated with moving to a new strategy.

SWOT and PEST are often used in combination with the Ansoff Matrix; business strengths and weaknesses as well as external factors should all play into your choice of growth strategy.

19. 7S Model

Developed by McKinsey consultants, this strategic business planning model emphasizes the importance of aligning an organization’s key internal elements to achieve strategy. Those key elements are:

• Structure : The organizational chart or chain of command
• Strategy : The future plan of action, supported by an organization’s mission and vision
• System : The technical infrastructure that enables daily workflows
• Skill : The capabilities of team members
• Style : The management style of leaders
• Staff : Employees and how they are recruited, trained, and motivated
• Shared value : The norms, values, and beliefs that guide actions and decisions

The first step in applying the 7S model is to examine the current interconnectedness of these elements within your own organization; are there areas of weakness or inconsistencies? For example, you might discover that your skills training for employees is hindered by antiquated workflows and technology.

Once you understand the relationships between these elements, you can work toward creating synergies that better support your strategy, whatever it may be. The 7S model is best used during a strategy change, or whenever a major shift is occurring in any one of the seven areas.

See ClearPoint Strategy in action! Click here to watch our quick 6-minute demo

20. constraints analysis (theory of constraints).

Constraints analysis is predicated on the idea that there are clear obstacles to strategy execution within your organization. Eliminating the weak link (or at least improving performance in that area) is the key to better results.

To apply constraints analysis correctly, you must first identify the constraint, or the main factor that limits your success. Process bottlenecks, faulty thinking, labor shortages, an unhealthy company culture, market conditions, or any number of other issues could be the culprit.

While you might identify more than one problem area, constraints analysis focuses on improving one area at a time to achieve quick, impactful results.

Using ClearPoint Strategy To Track Your Strategic Planning Models

Framework choices—and even strategies themselves—are flexible, but what’s not flexible is the need for software to track your performance. Tracking is the only way to know if your strategic plan is working—if the data shows your actions aren’t making an impact, you need to make a change. While most organizations understand that tracking itself is a necessity, they’re using the wrong tools to do it.

The most common alternative to strategy software is Excel. Excel may be a familiar and affordable tool, but it’s costing your organization dearly in ways you may not have thought of:

For decision-makers, Excel-based reports are difficult to digest, which negatively impacts decision-making. Excel was built for numbers but it wasn’t built to easily show analysis and recommendations or real-time data, all of which are essential components of tracking. On top of that, spreadsheets simply make it harder to understand performance data. As a result, your leadership team isn’t getting all the information they need to make strategic decisions.

For the strategy and reporting teams, the use of spreadsheets and the manual collection and updating they require is a tremendous waste of time and a constant headache. There is also inherent risk—even with the most meticulous and careful management—in manual updating and version control across large and elaborate spreadsheets.

No doubt about it, Excel is, in fact, a somewhat costly tool. There is a better way—software exists that automates data updating and collects everything in one place for faster, safer, and better reporting. Strategy software like ClearPoint was built exclusively for strategy performance reporting. So not only does it solve the above issues but it actually improves the likelihood of executing your strategy successfully.

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If you want homemade bread, you need access to the right appliances and ingredients. And if your strategic plan is a loaf of sourdough, your strategic planning tools are the measuring spoons, the framework is the recipe, and your model is the oven. Each component works together to create the desired result.

Whether it’s baking fresh bread or increasing revenue or customer satisfaction, all goals take strategic planning initiatives — and in some cases, all-purpose flour — to accomplish. Let's go over the 15 most popular frameworks and five of our favorite strategic planning tools to achieve organizational success.

What is strategic planning?

The goal of developing a strategic plan is to communicate where your organization wants to go and determine what each team member needs to do to help get it there. Strategic planning helps your organization develop and document action items for carrying out the company vision and achieving business goals. 

While there are several models that can help you determine opportunities, priorities, and overall objectives, most strategic planning processes follow five general steps:

• Identify your organization’s vision
• Assess your current internal and external environments
• Outline goals
• Determine stakeholder responsibilities
• Measure and assess outcomes

Regardless of the process you choose, each of these steps will lead to the next, allowing you to build out a comprehensive strategic plan.

15 types of strategic planning frameworks

Strategic planning frameworks help teams with brainstorming in order to create specific goals from an overall vision. Frameworks are essentially roadmaps to take teams from ideas to actions. You don’t necessarily need to use a framework within a model — just like you don’t necessarily need to follow a recipe to bake a loaf of bread — but it helps you produce the best outcome. And don’t feel limited to using only one framework within a particular model.

Although it’s not a complete list, the 15 frameworks listed below are some of the most commonly used.

1. Balanced scorecard

Created by Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. David Norton, the balanced scorecard is designed for organizations that want to focus on their business as a whole, rather than solely on financial performance. It helps give leadership teams a look at how their operations are performing, particularly within quick timelines.

When using the balanced scorecard, you’ll reference four factors to set goals and assess performance:

• Customers or clients: How your users perceive your business
• Internal processes: Your organization’s efficiency when developing quality products or services
• Organizational capacity: Your company culture and the ways in which your business can improve and grow
• Financial capacity: Your organization’s potential profitability and the effectiveness of resource allocation

Once you determine where your organization stands with regard to the factors above, you can develop specific goals, measurable objectives, and the steps you’ll need to take to achieve these.

2. Objectives and key results (OKR)

Objectives and key results (OKR) is a straightforward strategic planning framework used to translate overarching business goals into specific measurable objectives. It helps you define:

• Objectives: Identify three to five time-bound goals you want to achieve.
• Key results: Determine three to five quantitative outcomes per objective.

The OKR framework helps your team build connections between their individual contributions and your company’s success. Your team should shoot for a 70% key result success rate . If they’re hitting 100% right out of the gate, your organization’s goals weren’t ambitious enough.

Related: OKRs vs. KPIs: What’s the difference?

3. SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a framework for strategic planning that helps you identify your organization’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats. You should use the SWOT framework at the beginning of your strategic planning process to align stakeholders and provide a common lens through which to view your company’s current position.

List your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within the four quadrants of a 2x2 box. Once outlined, your team can seek connections between quadrants that will inform your strategy. The goal of the SWOT framework is to help you create a strategy that takes advantage of growth opportunities but also prepares for worst-case scenarios.

4. PEST or PESTLE analysis

A PEST analysis is a strategic planning framework that helps teams analyze external political, economic, sociocultural, and technological factors that could impact your business goals. It could also be modified to include legal and environmental elements (PESTLE).

Like a SWOT analysis, considering each factor of PEST or PESTLE within your industry environment gives your team advanced warning about any significant or immediate threats to your organizational goals. It also enables teams to pinpoint business opportunities within each of the framework’s factors.

5. Gap analysis

The gap analysis framework should be used to compare where your organization currently stands with where you want it to be and help you understand how to bridge the gap between the two. 

With the gap analysis framework — also called the strategic planning gap, need assessment, or need-gap analysis — you’ll be able to determine weak points and root causes (or potential causes) of performance issues by comparing what you’re currently doing with what you intend to do. It helps you identify internal organizational deficiencies and create a plan that addresses them.

6. VRIO framework

The VRIO framework helps you identify your organization’s competitive advantages and is composed of four elements:

• Value: Do your resources help increase revenue or decrease costs, resulting in business value?
• Rarity: Is there a lot of competition in the market for your resources? Are other companies able to create your products and services using these resources?
• Imitability: Could a competing organization copy your products and services easily?
• Organization: Does your organization have the right systems in place to capitalize on your resources?

By analyzing these elements, you’ll be able to refine your organization’s vision and create a plan that helps you meet your customers’ needs.

7. Porter’s Five Forces

Developed in 1979 by Michael Porter, the Five Forces strategic planning framework helps you identify and understand the factors that put competitive pressure on your organization.

The five forces are:

• Bargaining power of buyers: If the same products and services are offered elsewhere with minimal differences in quality, consumers will have the power to influence pricing.
• Bargaining power of suppliers: If there are fewer product or service alternatives for consumers, suppliers like large retailers will have the power to drive down costs.  
• Threat of new entrants: What are your industry’s barriers to entry? New companies in your marketplace will increase pressure on the cost of your products and services.
• Threat of substitute products or services: Can consumers easily substitute a competitor’s product or service for yours? Your business offerings need to create value.
• Rivalry among existing competitors: How'll your competitors’ growth impact your business? The more competition in the marketplace, the harder it'll be to create value with your business offerings.

These forces determine how economic value is divided among your competitors, so using this framework for strategic planning will help you identify your company’s position in the industry.

8. 7S model

The 7S model was developed by McKinsey consultants, and it emphasizes the value of strategically aligning internal departments with business processes. The key elements organizations should be looking to align include:

• Strategy: Your organization’s business plan for outperforming your competitors supported by your company’s mission and vision.
• Structure: How your internal departments and teams are organized; the chain of command.
• Systems: The procedures, daily duties, and technical infrastructure your organization uses to perform.
• Shared values: The beliefs and norms that guide your business decisions and actions; these reflect your company’s work ethic.
• Style: The way management and other stakeholders approach leadership.
• Staff: How employees are sought out and trained and what motivates them; your workers’ general capabilities.
• Skills: Your team members’ capabilities; the level of employee competence. 

The 7S model encourages leadership teams to explore the interconnectedness of these elements within the company and look for inconsistencies or areas of weakness. Once you’ve noted the areas that need to be strengthened, you can work toward realigning these elements to accomplish strategic goals in your organization.

Related: Tactical vs. strategic planning: Why you need both

9. Ansoff Matrix

The Ansoff Matrix framework was developed to help companies plan their growth strategies. The base for this framework is a 2x2 matrix with “products” on the x-axis and “markets” on the y-axis.

Each box within the matrix corresponds to a particular growth strategy. These are:

• Market penetration: Sell an existing product in an existing market.
• Market development: Sell an existing product in a new market.
• Product development: Sell a new product in an existing market.
• Diversification: Sell a new product in a new market.

Each business strategy is increasingly risky, with diversification being the biggest swing. The Ansoff Matrix helps organizations with financial decision-making and developing an action plan for business growth.

10. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix

This matrix was developed by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in the early 1970s to help companies categorize products or business units based on their market growth rate and relative market share. The BCG matrix helps you prioritize resource allocation by identifying where to invest, divest, or maintain products or business units.

The four groups under the BCG matrix include:

• Stars: Products with a high market share in a fast-growing market. These top performers need investment to maintain growth.
• Cash cows: Products with a high market share in a slow-growth market. They churn out cash and require minimal investment.
• Question marks: Products or business units with a low market share in a high-growth market. They have the potential to be stars if given high investment.
• Dogs: Products with low market share in a stagnant market. They often drain resources and are candidates for divestment.

11. Feature market analysis

Feature market analysis is a strategic approach used to assess the potential of new product features or innovations in the market. 

Key steps in feature market analysis typically include:

• Segmentation: Identifying specific market segments or customer groups with distinct needs and preferences to target with new features.
• Market needs: Gathering data on customer preferences, pain points, and trends through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or other methods.
• Competitor analysis: Studying competitors' products and features to understand what is currently available in the market and identify gaps or areas for differentiation.
• Feature prioritization : Evaluating potential features based on criteria such as customer demand, feasibility, competitive advantage, and alignment with the overall product strategy.

12. Lean canvas

The lean canvas is a one-page strategic management framework adapted from the Business Model Canvas by Ash Maurya. It helps startups and entrepreneurs efficiently develop and iterate on business strategy. 

Lean canvas provides a structured framework for identifying key elements of a business model, including:

• Problem: Describes the top three problems your customers face.
• Solution: Outlines your solution to the identified problems.
• Key metrics: Lists the key performance indicators (KPIs) you'll use to measure success.
• Unique value proposition: States the unique value your product or service offers to customers.
• Unfair advantage: Highlights any strengths or advantages that give your business an edge over competitors.
• Customer segments: Identifies the target customer segments for your product or service.
• Channels: Specifies the channels through which you'll reach and acquire customers.
• Revenue streams: Details how your business will generate revenue.
• Cost structure: Outlines the fixed and variable costs associated with running your business.

13. Four corners analysis

The four corners analysis, developed by Michael Porter, helps you understand a competitor's intent, objectives, and strengths. It addresses four core questions:

• Drivers : This corner examines the driving forces behind your competitors' actions, such as market trends, customer preferences, and industry dynamics.
• Current strategy: This corner looks at your competitor's current strategy, including its objectives, goals, and the tactics it employs to achieve them.
• Management assumptions: This corner explores your competitors' beliefs and assumptions on market conditions and competitive dynamics.
• Capabilities and resources: This corner evaluates the competitor's strengths and weaknesses, such as technology, talent, brand reputation, and financial resources.

14. Pareto analysis

Pareto analysis helps you prioritize tasks, issues, or factors based on the principle that a small number of inputs (20%) typically lead to a large majority of outputs (80%).

During the strategic planning process, you often identify multiple issues or challenges you need to address to achieve your goals. With Pareto analysis, you focus on the ones that have the most significant impact on your organization's performance or objectives.

15. The 3 horizons model

This strategic framework is developed by McKinsey to help you balance focus between short-term optimization, medium-term innovation, and long-term transformation. 

The three horizons represent different timelines and levels of innovation:

• Horizon 1: Represents products, services, and business models that drive current profitability and performance. The focus is on optimizing operations and improving efficiency.
• Horizon 2: Includes emerging opportunities and initiatives that have the potential to become significant contributors to future growth and profitability.
• Horizon 3: Represents disruptive innovations and future possibilities that have the potential to reshape industries and create entirely new markets.

5 great strategic planning tools

Strategic planning tools are software programs that help teams put frameworks into action. There are many tools out there, each offering a unique specialty or perspective.

There's no one platform that's perfect for every single company. But these five are all exceptional at helping companies build their strategic plans. Find the one that best fits your company to help with planning.

Not to brag, but… Mural’s visual work platform makes strategic collaboration easier. It gives teams the tools — like custom templates and asynchronous collaboration features (like anonymous voting) — to outline business goals, identify key performance metrics, and measure results.

Mural’s templates for strategy and alignment help teams start the planning process by providing structure for frameworks like OKR or SWOT analysis . And each template features facilitation assistance to walk your team through strategic planning activities .

Cross-functional collaboration is easy in Mural — in real time or asynchronously. The anonymous voting feature, for example, lets teams come to a consensus and reach internal alignment quickly. 

ClickUp is a project management tool that helps teams prioritize tasks and organize strategic plans.

ClickUp offers templates like matrices and visual timeliness so you’re able to plug in content quickly, process this information, and start coming up with plans faster.

There’s also a feature called ClickUp Goals that helps teams break objectives down into smaller tasks using Targets or ways to measure each item. These targets include number, true/false, currency, and task.

ClickUp is comprehensive, but the pre-built automations may be limiting to some users if too many are triggered at the same time or if your organization requires more customization.

Hive marries task management with strategic planning by helping teams manage complex timelines, large-scale projects, and workflows.

Hive has goal-setting and milestone-tracking features that help teams set task dependencies, follow progress, and share reports with relevant stakeholders. Its visualization tools allow you to toggle between overarching organizational goals and individual teammate objectives. 

You can use the Hive Pages feature as a dashboard for your workspace’s hub. You can set Pages as public or private, add and customize widgets within your Pages, and even export Pages to non-Hive users.

A chat function is available within the tool, but some users have reported losing messages within the platform. So, some may find other collaboration tools more reliable for communication.

Airtable is a next-generation platform that gives teams the power of relational databases in the form of user-friendly spreadsheets. It lets users organize, collaborate on, and store strategic plans within these databases.

Airtable offers an OKR tracking template that helps align teams and manage goals while maintaining accuracy. It also includes a Sync feature that updates workflows seamlessly across teams.

Airtable is a flexible tool but may have limitations, like lagging, when dealing with complex projects or datasets. Data processing functions and complicated calculations could lead to slower response times within the platform.

Trello is a Kanban-based project management tool. Its intuitive design features boards and cards, which can be used to structure strategic models and frameworks. 

Trello offers board templates for project and task management that provide organizational structures to help teams outline deliverables and assign tasks. It also features Timeline and Calendar views, so it’s easy to envision goals and schedule deadlines.

Power-Ups are Trello board features that allow you to use your favorite third-party apps directly within the platform. However, some users may find that combining Power-Ups from different vendors may cause friction in Trello’s functionality.

Bring your organization’s vision to life

There’s no one best framework or strategic planning tool — the right options for you'll depend on your organization’s vision, mission, and available resources. 

Regardless of methodology, most strategic planning begins with analyzing your current internal business environment and external factors, developing specific objectives, and creating action items to achieve these goals. 

Not sure where to start your strategic planning? Mural's template library includes preformatted, customizable frameworks (like this radar template !) to get your team on the path to success.

Related blog posts

The 5 steps of the strategic planning process

How to hold effective strategic planning meetings

6 strategic planning activities for your organization

Related blog posts.

How to use reverse brainstorming with your team

What is a flowchart? Examples, tips, and templates

Time blocking best practices: How to boost your productivity

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• What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

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What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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9 effective strategic planning models for your business

Strategic planning models can make a big difference to your organization. That remains true whether you’re a startup developing an overall strategy or an established business fine-tuning internal processes.

But there are many strategic planning models, and it’s vital to pick one that suits your purpose and needs. The right framework will help you streamline processes, drive alignment, and propel your business.

To help your research process, we’ve compiled a list of the most effective strategic planning models and their top use cases. Let’s take a look.

🧐 Looking for a flexible framework to help you reach your business objectives? Leapsome’s goal management tools fit any strategic planning process. 👉 Learn more

What is a strategic planning model?

A strategic planning model is a framework that allows organizations to map out their short- and long-term business plans. They can help:

• Identify and overcome obstacles 
• Improve and streamline operations
• Reach overarching business goals
• Create alignment between different departments
• Track progress over time

And you don’t have to limit your organization to one strategic planning model. Businesses can benefit from using multiple approaches, even simultaneously. But different strategic planning models are best suited for different situations, so make your choice based on your business type, growth stage, priorities, and goals. 

9 models for strategic planning

These are some of the most popular strategic planning models. Our list covers a definition of each model, an example of it in action, and which use cases it works best for.

1. Objectives & key results (OKRs)

OKRs are a popular goal-setting framework that organizations, teams, and individuals use to define long-term objectives and track progress. To better understand the meaning of OKRs , let’s unpack the acronym:

• Objectives — ambitious but achievable long-term goals
• Key results — milestones used to measure progress toward each objective

When establishing your OKRs, create quarterly objectives for all company levels — Leapsome has a free OKR template to help you get started. Then, revisit your OKRs regularly to monitor your progress and make adjustments if necessary. You can also introduce regular OKR meetings to your organization’s internal processes.

OKR example

Here’s an example of an OKR for a B2B SaaS company:

Objective | Significantly scale our customer base and deliver our great product to more people

• Key results: 
• Increase sales conversion rate from 25% to 30%
• Reduce user churn from 5% to 3%
• Publish a successful case study on our website every quarter
• Achieve a minimum of 4.7 out of 5 rating across all major review sites

OKRs work best for organizations that want to create more alignment behind their goals. By breaking down company-wide objectives into smaller, more manageable tasks, OKRs ensure everyone works toward a common purpose.

‍ OKRs also show employees how their work contributes to the big picture, giving them a sense of purpose and boosting employee engagement . Research by Gallup links engaged employees to lower turnover rates, better work performance, and a thriving work culture. Consequently, OKRs help companies build successful workplaces.

💡 Wondering how to introduce OKRs to your organization? Use Leapsome’s flexible framework to set company-wide objectives and track them in one intuitive place. 👉 Learn more

2. SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for strengths , weaknesses , opportunities , and threats . Use the SWOT model to define internal and external factors affecting your business. Then, compare the different factors to assess the risk of a potential strategy. 

For example, if your organization’s strengths match opportunities in the market — say, you have a lot of capital, and your competitors don’t — you know you have a competitive advantage. In that scenario, you can take an offensive business strategy with relatively low risk.

SWOT example

Here’s a SWOT example for a sales-based organization:

• Strengths — We have an excellent rapport with our customers and a loyal customer base.
• Weaknesses — Our current supply chain is inadequate.
• Opportunities — There’s high customer demand for one of our products.
• Threat — Our main competitor is developing a similar product.

Based on this SWOT analysis, our example organization isn’t in a strong strategic position. There’s a risk they won’t produce or distribute enough of their product to meet demand, and their competitor has the potential to outperform them. They should prioritize optimizing their product offering and solving supply chain issues over generating leads or working on an aggressive marketing campaign.

Any business can benefit from SWOT analysis. However, it’s best to use it at the beginning stages of a new strategy and with a specific goal in mind. You could try a SWOT approach when deciding priorities, like implementing new technology or restructuring your organization.

3. PEST or PESTLE analysis

PEST analysis focuses on external factors that can affect your organization. The letters stand for:

• Socio-cultural
• Technological

And depending on your industry, you might add legal and environmental factors to make PESTLE. 

PEST or PESTLE example

Here’s an example of a PESTLE analysis for a multinational confectionery company:

• Political factors — The government of a country where we sell many products is planning to raise import tariffs.
• Economic factors — Our target demographic (13 to 21-year-olds) has more disposable income now that Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted.
• Socio-cultural factors — Surveys report that customers consider our products healthy.
• Technological factors — Engineers devised a more efficient way to farm the main ingredient in half our products.
• Legal factors — The FDA approved our latest chocolate bar.
• Environmental factors — NGOs are pressuring us to use more environmentally friendly processes.

PEST analysis lets you assess the business environment for a product or service, so it’s best used during the beginning stages of a project.

4. The Balanced Scorecard framework

The Balanced Scorecard framework lets you take a holistic approach to business planning that doesn’t just focus on economic performance. Instead, you look at four perspectives: 

• Financial perspective — how well your organization is performing economically
• Customer perspective — your customer satisfaction and retention levels
• Internal business perspective — the quality and efficiency of your internal operations
• Innovation and learning perspective — your ability to improve, pivot, and grow your business

Then, create objectives and define measures to track your progress for each perspective. Those measures will support you in planning and executing initiatives to achieve your goals. And as you carry out this strategy, you can update your scorecard to show your progress.

Balanced Scorecard example

The management at ECI (Electronic Circuits Inc.) wanted to improve their delivery times. But when they talked to customers about the issue, the organization received unreliable feedback — different people had different definitions of being ‘on time.’

Using the Balanced Scorecard framework, managers shifted focus to their operations and checked the efficiency of their manufacturing process. They discovered ways to optimize the business’s cycle time, yield, and costs. 

Despite not having a reliable customer perspective, the Balanced Scorecard’s comprehensive overview of the ECI organization provided a versatile solution for reducing delivery times and streamlining the business’s overall operations.

The Balanced Scorecard framework is best for understanding your business health and creating alignment across your company.

5. Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s Five Forces is an approach that lets you assess your product or service’s competitive advantage in the market. Identifying potential threats can guide your organization in developing a more dynamic strategic plan.

The ‘Five Forces’ that may affect your product are:

• The threat of new competitors — Are many new businesses popping up in your industry? How easy is it for new companies to develop a product or service similar to yours?
• The number of existing competitors — How many direct competitors are you contending with? What about adjacent competitors? Are any of them growing quickly?
• The bargaining power of suppliers — Could suppliers put pressure on you to lower costs or change your business model?
• The bargaining power of customers — Are your products or services available elsewhere? Is there a demand for them? Do people have issues with your pricing or quality?
• The threat of a substitute — How likely is a similar product or service to enter the market?

Porter’s Five Forces example

Let’s take the example of a cosmetics company planning to release a shampoo with SPF 50:

• The threat of new competitors — The shampoo requires expertise to develop, which is an obstacle for competitors entering the market.
• The number of existing competitors — Two companies with similar products are poised to grow. They could create an almost identical product and pressure them to lower costs.
• The bargaining power of suppliers — There’s a large number of suppliers, so they have little bargaining power.
• The bargaining power of customers — Depending on where customers live, they’ll consider the shampoo a seasonal product. As it’s almost winter in the countries with the largest customer base, demand is lower.
• The threat of a substitute — Research suggests that no products currently in development could fill the same need (protecting the scalp from sunburn).

Porter’s Five Forces are best for evaluating your product or service after development but before entering the market. It’s also helpful for assessing an organization’s overall competitive position. 

6. The VRIO framework

The VRIO framework helps organizations determine whether they can turn a resource into a competitive advantage. These can be physical resources like inventory, tools, and technology, or nonphysical ones like patents, skills, and work culture.

Let’s break down the VRIO acronym to understand how to evaluate each resource:

• Valuable — The resource increases revenue or decreases operational costs.
• Rare — The resource is limited or you control the supply.
• Inimitable — The resource is unique or complex, meaning it’s difficult for competitors to copy.
• Organizational — Your organization can exploit the full potential of the resource.

VRIO example

Here’s an example of a delivery company determining whether they can exploit their resource — distribution centers — to gain a competitive advantage:

• Valuable — All the distribution centers are in strategic positions, which makes them a valuable resource as the company can use their location to create more efficient delivery routes.
• Rare — The distribution network is a scarce resource because there are only a few ports for international delivery.
• Inimitable — Competitors could build distribution centers in nearby locations.
• Organizational — Delivery drivers aren’t using the most efficient routes between distribution centers.

The delivery company could have a temporary competitive advantage, but they’re not exploiting this resource. Management needs to address whatever stops delivery drivers from using the fastest route before rival delivery companies copy and control the same resource. ‍

The VRIO framework works best for businesses deciding how to launch a new product or service or determining how to improve their existing business model. 

Specifically, the organizational metric shows how efficiently your organization uses its resources. If you have a high score for the first three metrics but consistently fail to capture the value of your resources, it’s a sign you need to improve your internal processes.

Combine the VRIO framework with Porter’s Five Forces for a clear strategic direction when launching a new product.

7. The Hoshin Planning framework

The Hoshin Planning framework is mainly a top-down approach. This method outlines seven strategic planning stages, which are:

• Define your vision to clarify your organization’s primary purpose.
• Develop your main objectives to give your organization a competitive advantage.
• Break down objectives into smaller annual goals.
• Set goals across your entire organization — at C-level, managerial, departmental, and individual levels.
• Implement your plans.
• Perform monthly reviews to reflect and monitor progress.
• Do an annual review to determine if you’ve achieved your goals and what to work on next.

It’s worth noting that the Hoshin Planning framework doesn’t have to be strictly top-down. Another core idea behind this method is that managers should ‘play catch ball’ — that is, bounce ideas between management, department heads, and team members during the first four stages.

Hoshin Planning example

Here’s how a car manufacturer might implement the Hoshin Planning framework:

• Management shares their vision of developing the most innovative technology on the market.
• They decide their main goal is to develop the first self-driving car by the end of 2025. But when leadership talks to the head of engineering, they say this breakthrough won’t be possible by 2025. They collectively adjust the deadline to 2027.
• Management breaks this goal down into smaller targets. One of them is mapping out what the self-driving car should be able to do in every scenario. The engineering department agrees with this plan.
• ​​Those targets inform detailed initiatives, like observing real-life driving incidents and collecting data on traffic and accidents.
• All parties carry out the agreed-upon initiatives. After a month, management conducts a meeting to check everyone’s progress.
• A year later, the engineering department has data on most scenarios the self-driving car would encounter on the road.

Companies with complex processes — like manufacturing and tech businesses — are more likely to use the Hoshin Planning framework. Their operations benefit from the ‘catch ball’ idea because it’s easier to spot problems when you filter them through diverse teams.

The Hoshin Planning Framework is also ideal for creating alignment within your company. Consider it for a larger organization that’s experienced project issues and bottlenecks.

8. The Theory of Change model

The Theory of Change model involves establishing long-term goals and working backward. Start with your desired outcome and go through all preconditions necessary for it to become a reality. During this process, you determine what needs to change to reach your objectives.

Theory of Change example

Nonprofit organizations with specific missions often use the Theory of Change model. Take adult literacy, for example. The project team would start with an ideal situation — like their country having a 100% literacy rate — and work backward to find out what’s preventing them from achieving that aim. The issues might range from a lack of funding to a need to increase awareness about resources that are already available. Then, the nonprofit team could start addressing the issues they identified.

Any organization can benefit from the Theory of Change framework. Still, it works best for specific projects, like expanding your company abroad or opening a new department, as it involves scenario planning. 

9. The Blue Ocean strategy

The Blue Ocean strategy is a strategic planning model that’s become popular recently. Developed in 2004, this method assesses whether your organization operates in a saturated market. If so, the underlying assumption of the Blue Ocean strategy is that it’s better to create new demand.

In the strategy, the ‘ocean’ is a metaphor for the market. The ‘red ocean’ is full of predators (large companies) competing for food (customers) and turning the water red, whereas the ‘blue ocean’ is deep, unexplored water that’s full of potential (uncontested market space). Here’s a list of indicators that you’re in a ‘blue ocean’:

• You’ve found uncontested market space
• You’ve made the competition irrelevant
• You’re creating and capturing new demand
• You’re breaking the value-cost trade-off

Blue Ocean example

Apple is a famous example of a business that operates in a ‘blue ocean.’ Although it’s one of the leading technology companies in the world, the Apple team still prefers to innovate new products rather than beat the competition.

The Blue Ocean strategy is ideal for small businesses and start-ups trying to establish themselves among larger organizations. Established companies in dynamic industries like tech can also use it to stay ahead of their competition.

How to implement a strategic planning model

Once you’ve set up your strategic plan, you’ll want to utilize it to its full potential. Here are some tips to make sure your strategy goes into action.

Align your approach to strategic planning with your values

There are many strategic planning models to choose from, and your organization can only implement so many. Although all of them have pros and cons, none are necessarily better than the others. So, choose the strategic planning models that reflect your organization’s values. That way, it’ll be easier to introduce your strategy and get all team members on board.

If you’re a people-first organization, OKRs are an ideal choice. OKRs involve your employees in company initiatives, make internal decisions more transparent, and give everyone a sense of purpose. 

Allocate resources to the strategic planning process

Strategic planning is like any other task: It requires resources like funding, time, and research. You should have a budget and schedule for every part of the process.

The employees helping you with strategic planning and implementation are also vital assets — offer them training and consistent support. Free up their schedule for strategic planning and create a timeline for the entire process to set your team up for success. ‍

Review your progress

Aside from planning and implementing your strategy, you’ll need to check on your progress regularly. That means monthly and annual reviews at all levels.

Many strategic planning models already have reviews built into their stages. But even if they don’t, you should reevaluate at regular intervals. You can define some key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your initiatives and your overall business health. Popular KPIs include revenue growth, client retention rate, and employee satisfaction.

Be ready to adjust your strategic plan

As the saying goes, even the best-laid plans often go awry. You may find that conditions change as you implement your strategic plan or that you didn’t predict certain issues. The key isn’t necessarily to strategize better, but to have a dynamic strategy. This will allow you to adjust your plan and deal with problems as they arise.

For instance, you might opt for the PEST analysis, but be open to considering important legal and environmental factors when they come up. You can try to predict what new legislation or world events may affect your industry. Then, if any conditions arise that affect your business, you’ll be able to pivot your strategy without too much additional effort.

Boost your organization’s performance with strategic planning models

Strategic planning models help you assess the current state of your organization, decide which direction to take in the future, and communicate your plans to your employees. They can be the difference between your business merely sustaining itself and thriving.

If you’re wondering how to implement a new strategic planning model, Leapsome can offer professional support. Our Goals and OKR Management Software provides an adaptable framework for your chosen strategic model.

🚀 Kickstart your strategic plan with Leapsome Our goals and OKR management tools make it easy to implement your strategy of choice. 👉 Book a demo

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26 Best Strategy Tools For Your Organization in 2024

Developing a sound strategy is something every organization strives to achieve. A highly effective strategy helps organizations establish their competitive position, grow market share, and thrive in a ruthless business environment. Or they become irrelevant and slowly die.

However, choosing the right tools to execute that strategy and bring their strategic processes to life is something few are concerned with. 

In this article, we’ll cover a collection of strategy tools and free templates that every growth-oriented strategist should have in their strategy toolkit:

• Strategic planning tools
• Strategic management tools
• Strategic tracking tools
• Strategy execution tool that companies prefer to keep secret 💜

Strategic Planning Tools

The first significant part of the strategic management process or business planning involves analysis and planning. The strategy tools we've listed in this section are all about helping you understand where you are today and where you should be tomorrow.

Strategy analysis tools to kickstart the strategic planning process

The first step of the strategic planning process is to study your organization’s strengths and internal and external factors to inform your strategic decisions. 

💡Analysis is key to identifying weak spots and opportunities. But don’t get trapped in that rabbit hole of endless evaluation. Focus on core business metrics , prioritize initiatives that move the needle, and take action. 

Here’s a list of free tools and templates:

1. GAP Analysis Toolkit

This toolkit will help you understand the gap between where you’re today and what you need to do to get where you want to be as a company. Free template included.  

2. SWOT Analysis

Use this guide with free template to help you identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats you should consider when evaluating your strategic options.

3. PEST Analysis

PEST Analysis helps you to analyze Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors that could impact your strategy.

4. PESTLE Analysis

PESTLE Analysis is an expanded version of a PEST Analysis. It adds two more external factors to your analysis: Legal and Environmental. Grab a simple PESTLE Analysis Template here . 

5. VRIO Analysis Tool

VRIO framework will help you identify your business's competitive advantages.

6. Porter's Five Forces model

This framework (introduced by Michael Porter ) helps you identify five forces that place competitive pressure on a company in any given industry. It focuses on these five dimensions: Threat of New Entrants, Supplier Power, Buyer Power, Threat of Substitutes, and Competitive Rivalry.

7. McKinsey 7S Framework

Mckinsey 7S framework is an oldie but goldie. This tool will help you identify strategic alignment between departments and processes. Grab your template in this free collection of templates for internal analysis.

8. Ansoff Matrix

This matrix can help you figure out which of four strategic directions you should take to grow your business successfully. Its four quadrants include market penetration, product development, market development , and diversification.

9. BCG matrix

Boston Consulting Group developed a valuable strategic planning tool to help companies prioritize their different businesses by their degree of profitability. You can find a free BCG matrix template here . 

10. GE Matrix

McKinsey’s GE Matrix is a visual tool designed to help portfolio managers determine resource allocation for multi-business portfolios. 

Along with providing an overview of business units' performance, the GE Matrix also prescribes three strategic paths (grow, hold, and harvest) to inform strategic decisions.

11. Value Chain Analysis

Want to review your new product’s journey? This template will help you identify and analyze all related activities and processes to increase efficiency.

12. The Business Model Canvas

Use this strategic management tool to assess new business models, whether you are an existing business or a fast-growing start-up. 

👉You can also download our internal analysis toolkit with a collection of templates to help you with analysis.

📚 Recommended readings: 

• Develop An Iterative Strategic Planning Process (+Template)
• How To Conduct Internal Analysis (+ Free Templates)
• How To Perform Gap Analysis In 5 Easy Steps 

Strategic planning tools for strategy formulation

Strategy formulation is where the rubber hits the road. By now, you should have a good idea of your internal capabilities and the situation of your external business environment. So, it's time to set goals and create an action plan to achieve them. 

1. Vision Statement Toolkit

This Excel-based strategy tool will help you create a vision statement for your organization from scratch. 

2. Values Toolkit

Another pillar of your strategy is setting your strategic values. This Excel-based strategy toolkit will help with that process.

💡 When is the right time for a makeover of your company’s vision and values? It’s a good move when dealing with significant organizational changes, growth slowdowns, or cultural issues because it can boost stakeholders’ motivation. On the flip side, skip this exercise if you’re dealing with crisis management or focusing on short-term business goals like meeting quarterly financial targets.

3. Strategic planning models

We’ve put together an overview of the five most widely used strategic planning models , including: 

• Cascade Model
• Hoshin Kanri Model
• Balanced Scorecard
• V2MOM Model

💡Strategic planning models and frameworks are a great starting point to start brainstorming and formulating your strategy. But they don’t solve your alignment and execution problems. That’s why you need the right strategy tools that combine iterative strategic planning , centralized observability , and execution in one place.

4. Strategic Planning Template

Ready to turn your strategy into an execution-ready plan? Use this free strategic planning template to set clear goals, build a strategic roadmap, and assign responsibilities to ensure stakeholder engagement with your strategy.

4. KPI Cheatsheets

Here you can explore an online library of free KPI examples for various industries to inspire you. 

💡Craft a custom strategy that suits your organization's unique goals and priorities. Start with our pre-built templates as jumping-off points for a highly effective strategic plan. Check out some examples from our template library : 

• Corporate Strategy Template  
• Marketing Strategy Template
• Customer Service Strategy Template 
• Change Management Strategy Template

Strategic Management Tools

The second phase of the strategic management process is executing the strategic plan you created earlier—the most crucial part of every strategy. 

PowerPoint is a terrible tool for strategy execution, but a good presentation is a fine starting point to introduce your people to the new strategy. Up your game with an interactive Miro presentation rather than a stuffy old PowerPoint!

2. Strategic Engagement and Communication Toolkit

It all comes down to communicating your strategy and the why behind it. To drive strategy execution successfully, you need to get buy-in from involved stakeholders. This toolkit will help you plan out your strategic engagement plan to ensure you cover all the bases of effective strategy communication.

3. Alignment map

This Cascade feature helps organizations map out how their goals are connected and impact one another. 

This is our version of a strategy map that helps you visualize the alignment of objectives across multiple plans, giving you complete visibility into the execution web that's spinning inside your organization. 

As a result, you can quickly identify any risks or roadblocks, prioritize critical initiatives, and eliminate misaligned projects.

📚 Recommended reading:  

• Strategy Execution in 6 Steps
• 6 Ways To Master The Art Of Strategy Execution

Strategy Tracking Tools

The final phase of the strategic management process involves tracking the effectiveness of your strategy and then iterating where needed. These tools are all about tracking, analytics, and iteration!

Strategic analysis monitors whether or not you've delivered on your strategy and made progress toward your short- and long-term goals. It also helps you understand where you are succeeding or failing.

1. KPI Reporting Template (Excel version)

Manually track important metrics and KPIs with this Excel template.

2. KPI Reporting Template

Connect this template to your existing business strategy tools, automatically track your KPIs, and have real-time data at your fingertips. 

3. OKR Excel Template (Excel version)

Use this free and straightforward template to set and track OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). You can track company, team, or individual OKRs. 

4. Balanced scorecard

You can use this Balanced Scorecard Template to centralize the most important metrics in one place and measure your critical KPIs. Since it’s based on a traditional balanced scorecard framework , you can organize your KPIs and key initiatives into four standard categories: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning & Growth.

5. Real-time dashboards and strategy reports

Strategy tools with real-time dashboards and reports are the missing piece that help you bridge the gap between you, your teams, and your upper leadership to ensure successful strategy execution. 

By leveraging these tools, you’ll be able to stay on top of performance, adjust your strategies on the go, and keep everyone focused on strategic goals.  

📚 Recommended reading: Best Reporting Tools To Drive Strategy (Pros, Cons, Pricing & Reviews)

Strategy Execution Tool

Despite the extensive list of strategy tools, templates, and models above—what if we told you that it’s possible to plan, manage, and track your strategic and growth initiatives from one central hub ?

A tool that top companies see as a competitive advantage and prefer to keep confidential? 

From the beginning, our goal was to make a tool that consolidates different strategy tools into a single platform—taking care of all the phases of the strategic management process:

1. Planning phase: You can use customizable strategic planning models that best fit your strategy approach. Drive strategic alignment across the organization by building a high-level company strategy plan and connecting it with strategic plans at the departmental or team level.

2. Executing phase: With its powerful integrations , strategic portfolio and project management , and goal management capabilities , Cascade helps you and your team to bridge the gap between planning and execution.

3. Tracking phase: KPI tracking , real-time dashboards, or drill-down reports - you name it, we have it. You will be able to provide data-driven insights to your C-suite team or get a real-time view of what's getting done or not. That’s the only way to faster and more confident decision-making.

Today, Cascade is the leading strategy execution platform with a laser focus on progress and speed and a commitment to top-notch customer service. 

Whereas many companies fail to turn strategy into tangible outcomes, Cascade helps leaders deliver business profitability by giving them a centralized observability of what’s happening across the organization. 

Boost Your Strategy Execution With The Right Strategy Tools 🚀

Strategy planning models, tools, and templates are great for fleshing out your strategy, but to successfully execute strategy and adapt as needed, you also need the right software. 

A great strategy execution platform will help you to create a single source of truth for your strategy, eliminating wasted time in disconnected tools, confusion and potentially preventing a failed strategy execution. 

A single home for your strategy will help you to keep everyone on the same page, allowing leaders to focus on the most critical parts of strategy execution : clear goals, context, and strategic prioritization. 

And when you are not wasting your time in meetings to keep everyone aligned, you can focus on the greater purpose of actually helping your team members learn, grow, and deliver results .

Cascade makes it easy to build strategic roadmaps and assign KPIs and owners to drive accountability. It lets your employees collaborate on shared goals to drive strategy execution across the organization. 

‍ Interested in seeing Cascade in action? Get started for free or book a demo with Cascade’s experts.

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Strategic Planning Techniques

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For today’s leading companies, strategic planning can serve as a competitive advantage to how they think about growth. Now more than ever, it’s essential that companies have a clear operating framework to help optimize for efficiency and alignment. Without a clear-cut strategy and direction that’s been agreed upon by leadership and communicated to the company, it’s easy to lose focus on priorities and instead find team’s bogged down with urgent, but non-essential initiatives. But how do you actually stay focused on what matters most to the business and the goals you’ve set out to achieve?

For starters, it requires your team to view strategic planning as more than just a process to ‘check-the-box’. Strategic planning is evolving to be a more dynamic and real-time process that allows companies to frequently evaluate your operations to ensure they are as efficient and goal-oriented as possible. Building a strategic plan gives you the ability to set goals and generate success while understanding the needs of your company and customers. Several models of strategic planning help you achieve different results, but ultimately guide you in improving your company’s operations and products or services.

At Elate , we built our strategic planning solution from the pain we felt firsthand as former strategy and operations leaders. Our platform was created to help strategy and operations leaders build a strategic plan all in one easy-to-use solution that gives you the power to drive accountability and create visibility. In this post, we will discuss what are the various types of strategic planning and how to implement them. You’ll be on your way to building a better plan for your business in no time.

What Is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is when a company determines a strategy or direction, deciding how to allocate resources to reach a goal while staying competitive in their industry. Typically, to discover the fundamental variables driving their present performance. A business’s strategic plan consists of its:

• Mission of the company that drives success and customer engagement
• Vision for the strategic plan and the ultimate reason for changing
• Values of the business and the plan itself to ensure integrity
• Long-term goals that the business wants to achieve through the plan
• Action procedures to achieve the strategic plan goals.

What Are the 5 Planning Techniques?

Strategic planning techniques allow your business to assess and develop plans to improve organizational functions. But  “Which is the best planning technique?” is often a difficult question to answer because the technique your business uses depends on the information needed to plan effective strategies. With this in mind, we have laid out the top five strategic planning techniques and tools to help you take the next steps in your business planning.

Balanced Scorecard

Developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton , the balanced scorecard is a comprehensive look at a business’s objectives and operations. As they open their article, “What you measure is what you get.” In other words, you’ll only see improvements in the processes that you are paying attention to. To ensure that an organization's strategic objectives are realized, they are measured, monitored, and modified as needed. Customers, internal business operations, development and innovation, and finances are all elements of the scorecard that add up to four distinct reference points for goal-setting and performance evaluation. When developing a balanced scorecard, you should consider those points by asking:

• Customer perspective: How do our customers understand and view our business? 
• Internal perspective: What can we do better for our mission and outdo our competitors?
• Innovation and learning perspective: Can we continue to improve and create value? 
• Financial perspective: What is our potential profitability for our stakeholders?

Developing a strategic plan based on these four categories may assist you in creating more introspective and specific goals for your business. According to Kaplan and Norton, a balanced scorecard “forc[es] senior managers to consider all the important operational measures together” by  “let[ting] them see whether improvement in one area may have been achieved at the expense of another.” As the name suggests, it’s all about finding a balance that allows you to achieve all of your business goals.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is one of the more thorough strategic tools used to analyze a business’s competitive situation. This method can help you identify areas where your business can grow and maximize potential by assessing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats your business might encounter. A SWOT analysis is used to offer an assessment of a company, project, or sector based on facts and data. 

Because of the focus on the positive and negative aspects of your organization, you can assess the best plan of action. According to Hubspot , “a SWOT analysis allows you to make unbiased evaluations on your business or brand, market positioning, a new project or initiative, and a specific campaign or channel.” To build a SWOT plan, you need to answer productive questions like:

• Strengths: What advantages do you have over competitors? What expertise and experience do we have?
• Weaknesses: What skills can we improve? Do we need to invest in assets like technology or gain funding?
• Opportunities: Is your business model or project meeting the needs of the growing market? Will any new regulations or requirements benefit you?
• Threats: What issues might you face internally with teams or departments? Is there competition for the resources needed to complete your project?

SWOT analysis may be helpful at the start of a project or after your team has encountered a snag. Here are a few examples of when a SWOT analysis would be useful:

• Expanding your business into a new market you’ve not invested in before. 
• Redesigning your website to identify needs for improvement and engagement.
• Developing a new business idea like companies, products, or services.
• Investing in new opportunities to broaden your business’s reach.
• Partnering with other businesses to examine compatibility.

You'll be in a much better position to take meaningful action if you have a good awareness of your company's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the threats and opportunities in your market. Determining areas for development, establishing precise performance objectives, and building an action plan to stay ahead of the competition may be difficult without a SWOT analysis.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

OKRs can be an intuitive and simple strategic plan framework to help reach  important goals. OKRs are made by determining three to five objectives that you want to achieve in your business and then three to five key results for each of those objectives. This will allow you to develop reference points for your metrics to ensure you reach the goals you’ve set. For many companies, you can choose to measure based on % attainment or on a scale on  a 0 - 1 scale where 1 equals 100%. For example, if your business’s click-through rate on a social media ad post with a goal of 1000 unique visitors and you only achieve 750, your key result is a 0.75. 

At Elate, one of the most common challenges we see with OKRs is companies looking to overcomplicate the process from the onset, or potentially worse, copy and paste another company’s OKR framework. The reality is that much of the beauty of OKRs comes from the high-level structure that can be tailored to your business. 

OKRs have the advantage of being very adjustable and easy to measure due to the normalized scale. Teams should ideally aim for roughly 70% success rates on results. Consistent results of 100% might indicate goals that aren’t ambitious enough.

The PEST or PESTLE strategic planning models categorize direct or indirect factors that influence your business’s customers, suppliers, and competitors. They are broken down as political, economic, social, and technological (as well as legal and environmental) market forces. Each of these external factors has a definite impact on businesses and should be explored to see what impact they have on your business. Breaking down the PESTLE model should lead you to answer the following questions:

• Political: What is the country's political status and how does it affect the industry?
• Economic: What economic factors are the most common?
• Social: What is the importance of culture in the market and what elements impact it?
• Technological: What technology breakthroughs are most likely to disrupt the market structure?
• Legal: Is there any present industry law, and if so, could it be changed?
• Environmental: What concerns are there for the environment within the industry?

Determining how these factors influence your business will allow you to understand the greater impact of society and where your business fits within it. PESTLE can be used in combination with a SWOT analysis to compare the strengths and weaknesses determined by SWOT. This provides a much more rounded look at what is needed for change within a business.

Porter’s Five-Forces Model

Porter's Five Forces were developed by Michael Porter in the late 1970s and is an important strategic planning framework model. The Five Forces is a model used to assess how competitive a business is within its industry. This model explains why different industries may be profitable. Porter states in his article, “The collective strength of the forces may be painfully apparent to all the [competitors]; but to cope with them, the strategist must…analyze the sources of each.” The five forces Porter discusses are:

• Threat of new entrants or potential of new competition within the industry.
• Intensity of rivalry among existing firms or competition already within the industry.
• Threat of substitute products or services or what other products will rival your product.
• Bargaining power of customers or how much influence a customer has in numbers.
• Bargaining power of suppliers or how much influence a supplier has against competitors.

Of course, the way your industry operates dictates the effectiveness of this model. Understanding the factors affecting your industry can help you extract more relevant information for your business.

What Are Steps in Strategic Planning?

Developing a strategic planning framework using one of the methods above will help drive alignment across your business, and bring together vision with execution. However, you’ll need to take steps to get there. But what is the most important step in strategic planning? Ultimately the most important step you can take is developing the plan itself, but you should follow the five steps of planning to ensure you create the most effective plan for your business.

• Understand and establish your strategic position to determine your objectives and how you will achieve them.
• Prioritize your goals in order of importance to better understand your needs.
• Create a strategic plan based on the goals you’ve laid out using one of the several types of strategic planning.
• Implement and manage your strategy by communicating with stakeholders and team members and evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Review and adjust the plan monthly, quarterly, or annually to ensure your goals are met within the timeline.

Start Your Strategic Plan Today

Building a strategic plan takes a lot of time and resources. If you’re struggling to get the ball rolling, there is an easy solution! Elate is the leading platform for SaaS companies to communicate their vision, create alignment, and track performance. We understand the importance of planning techniques and give you the tools to implement your strategy seamlessly and effectively. You can create clear goals, drive alignment, and take control of communication to remain transparent and maintain focus. Visit our website today and you can set up Elate in just a few minutes.

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Table of Contents

Definition of business analysis, what are business analysis techniques, best business analysis techniques, do you want to become a business analyst, top effective business analysis techniques.

Business analysts are such an essential element for an organization’s survival and success today. By using different structured business analysis techniques, these analysts help companies identify needs, root out flaws, and sift through a flood of data and options to find the right actionable solution.

We’re here today to explore some of the top business analysis techniques and how they are successfully leveraged for an organization’s success. There are many of these proven business analysis problem-solving techniques to choose from. Still, the ones highlighted here are the more commonly used methods, and it’s reasonable to infer that their popularity stems from their effectiveness. Here is the list of the top business analysis techniques:

Business Process Modeling (BPM)

Brainstorming, moscow (must or should, could or would), most (mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics) analysis, pestle analysis, swot analysis, six thinking hats, non-functional requirement analysis, design thinking.

Business analysis is an umbrella term describing the combination of knowledge, techniques, and tasks employed for identifying business needs, then proposing changes and creating solutions that result in value for the stakeholders. Although a significant number of today’s business analysis solutions incorporate software and digital data-based elements, many professionals in the field may also end up advising on organizational changes, improving processes, developing new policies, and participating in strategic planning.

So, business analysts spur change within an organization by assessing and analyzing needs and vulnerabilities and then creating and implementing the best solutions. Much of the information used to draw these conclusions comes from data collected by various means, often falling under the term “big data.”

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Business analysis techniques are processes used to create and implement plans necessary for identifying a company’s needs and delivering the best results. There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” technique because every business or organization is different.

Here are the top business analysis techniques. Keep in mind that business analysts who want to be project managers should be familiar with most, if not all, of them.

1. Business Process Modeling (BPM)

BPM is often used during a project’s analysis phase to understand and analyze the gaps between the current business process and any future process that the business is shooting for. This technique consists of four tasks:

1. Strategic planning

2. Business model analysis

3. Defining and designing the process

4. Technical analysis for complex business solutions

Many industries, especially the IT industry, favor this technique because it’s a simple, straightforward way to present the steps of the execution process and show how it will operate in different roles.

2. Brainstorming

There’s nothing like good, old-fashioned brainstorming to generate new ideas, identify a problem’s root causes, and come up with solutions to complex business problems. Brainstorming is a group activity technique that is often used in other methods such as PESTLE and SWOT .

CATWOE identifies the leading players and beneficiaries, collecting the perceptions of different stakeholders onto one unified platform. Business analysts use this technique to thoroughly evaluate how any proposed action will affect the various parties. The acronym stands for:

• Customers: Who benefits from the business?
• Actors: Who are the players in the process?
• Transformation Process: What is the transformation at the core of the system?
• World View: What is the big picture, and what are its impacts?
• Owner: Who owns the impacted system, and what’s their relation?
• Environmental Constraints: What are the constraints, and how do they impact the solution?

4. MoSCoW (Must or Should, Could or Would)

MoSCoW prioritizes requirements by offering a framework that evaluates each demand relative to the rest. The process forces you to ask questions about the actual necessity of any given element. Is the item a must-have or a should-have? Is the demand something that could make the product better, or is it something that would be a good idea in the future?

5. MOST (Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics) Analysis

MOST is a robust business analysis framework—considered one of the best techniques for understanding an organization’s ability and purpose. This technique includes conducting a detailed, complete internal analysis of the organization’s goals and how to approach them. The acronym stands for:

• Mission: What is the organization’s purpose?
• Objectives: What are the key goals that help achieve the mission?
• Strategies: What are the options available for achieving the objectives?
• Tactics: What are the methods that the organization will follow to carry out the strategies?

6. PESTLE Analysis

Business analysts use the PESTLE model (sometimes called PEST) to identify environmental factors that can influence their company and how best to address them when making business decisions. Those influences are:

• Political: Financial support and subsidies, government initiatives, and policies.
• Economic: Labor and energy costs, inflation, and interest rates.
• Sociological: Education, culture, media, life, and population.
• Technological: New information and communication systems technologies.
• Legal: Local and national government regulations and employment standards.
• Environmental: Waste, recycling, pollution, and weather.

By analyzing and studying these factors, analysts gain a better understanding of how they will influence the organization’s narrative. This understanding, in turn, makes it easier for analysts to develop strategies on how to address them.

7. SWOT Analysis

One of the most popular techniques in the industry, SWOT identifies the strengths and weaknesses in a corporate structure, presenting them as opportunities and threats. The knowledge helps analysts make better decisions regarding resource allocation and suggestions for organizational improvement. The four elements of SWOT are:

• Strengths: The qualities of the project or business that give it an advantage over the competition.
• Weaknesses: Characteristics of the business that pose a disadvantage to the project or organization, when compared to the competition or even other projects.
• Opportunities: Elements present in the environment that the project or business could exploit.
• Threats: Elements in the environment that could hinder the project or business.

SWOT is a simple, versatile technique that is equally effective in either a quick or in-depth analysis of any sized organization. It is also useful for assessing other subjects, such as groups, functions, or individuals.

8. Six Thinking Hats

This business analysis process guides a group’s line of thinking by encouraging them to consider different ideas and perspectives. The ‘six hats’ are:

• White: Focuses on your data and logic.
• Red: Uses intuition, emotions, and gut feelings.
• Black: Consider potential negative results, and what can go wrong.
• Yellow: Focus on the positives; keep an optimistic point of view.
• Green: Uses creativity.
• Blue: Takes the big picture into account, process control.

The six thinking hats technique is often used in conjunction with brainstorming, serving as a means of directing the team’s mental processes and causing them to consider disparate viewpoints.

9. The 5 Whys

This technique is commonly found as often in Six Sigma as it is in business analysis circles. While journalism uses the “Five W’s” (Who, What, When, Where, and Why) in reporting, the 5 Whys technique just operates “Why” in a series of leading questions, this approach helps business analysts pinpoint a problem’s origin by first asking why the issue exists, then following it up by asking another “why?” question relating to the first answer, and so on. Here’s an example:

• Why? Because the wrong models were shipped.
• Why? Because the product information in the database was incorrect.
• Why? Because there are insufficient resources allocated to modernizing the database software.
• Why? Because our managers didn’t think the matter had priority.
• Why? Because no one was aware of how often this problem occurred.
• Countermeasure: Improve incident reporting, be sure managers read reports, allocate budget funds for modernizing database software.

10. Non-Functional Requirement Analysis

Analysts apply this technique to projects where a technology solution is replaced, changed, or built up from scratch. The analysis defines and captures the characteristics needed for a new or a modified system and most often deal with requirements such as data storage or performance. Non-functional requirement analysis usually covers:

• Performance
• Reliability

Non-Functional Requirement Analysis is commonly implemented during a project’s Analysis phase and put into action during the Design phase.

11. Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a business analysis technique that is primarily used for problem-solving and innovation. It's a human-centered approach that emphasizes empathy, collaboration, and creative thinking to develop solutions that meet user needs and create positive user experiences. Design Thinking is often employed to address complex, ambiguous, or user-centric problems by focusing on understanding the end-users' perspectives, motivations, and pain points.

If you’re looking for a more rewarding, better-paying career , you should consider business analysis. The higher demand for Business Analysts means security, marketability, and excellent financial gain. According to Salary.com , Business Analysts can earn a yearly average of USD 75,400. Simplilearn offers a Business Analysis Certification training course designed to make those first steps easier.

The Post Graduate Business Analysis program gives you expertise in the latest BA tools and techniques like the ones mentioned previously. You will master planning and monitoring, data analysis and statistics, visualizations, Agile Scrum methodologies, and SQL databases. The course supplements your training with real-world case studies and helps you become an AI-powered business analyst.

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6 business analysis techniques to use in your strategic plans

August 10, 2021 by MindManager Blog

By: Emily Finlay

For businesses, efficiency and effectiveness are key. Whether you’re executing a major project or determining the best ways to train new employees, it’s important to use best practices to achieve exceptional results.

Business analysis uncovers the strategies and processes that can help your business improve. You can find the flaws in your operations while determining what you need to change to fix them. Auditing and refining your business also offers the insights you and your leadership need to make informed decisions that will benefit your work moving forward.

Like any method, however, the power of business analysis depends on the methods used to execute it. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the top business analysis techniques. You’ll learn what each option offers and how you can use them to analyze your own processes.

What are business analysis techniques?

Business analysis techniques are the specific processes used to audit and improve business operations. These step-by-step procedures help analysts stay organized and make strategic decisions during the analysis.

What are the different types of business analysis techniques?

The most common types of business analysis include BPM, SWOT, MOST, CATWOE, PESTLE, and Six Hats Thinking. These planning methods can be used in a variety of industries and projects. From streamlining your operations to aligning your company’s purpose, these tactics can maintain your organization’s long-term success.

Business Process Modeling (BPM)

This technique, also known as business process mapping , creates a visual representation of the procedures a company uses. By visualizing the processes, teams and analysts can identify any problems. They can also see where efficiency is lost.

As you develop strategies to address these shortcomings, you can apply them to the model to see how they will affect the targeted process. This will also highlight any potential problems that these changes might create in other areas.

Business analysis steps: BPM

According to the International Institute of Business Analysis , here are the steps you should follow:

• Strategic planning – Start by researching and understanding the processes and problems you’re going to solve. Discover everything involved before creating your model.
• Business Model Analysis – Develop a model (such as mind mapping , flow charting, or diagramming) of the business processes with the information gained in step one. Analyze this visual and use it to guide your strategies.
• Define and design the process – Create the solutions you need and apply them to the model.
• Technical Analysis for complex business solutions – Use your visualization to analyze and improve the solutions.

Business analysis example: BPM

If a company is changing the way they produce a specific product, this technique can help them understand how adjusting that element will impact others. Rather than theorizing, they can use a visual flow to pinpoint obstacles and areas of improvement.

Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT)

These four elements define this technique, identifying internal (Strengths and Weaknesses) and external (Threats and Opportunities) factors. The most popular type of business analysis, SWOT drives informed decision making in nearly every area of business.

Business analysis steps: SWOT

Create a map with four quadrants, as outlined below, and use it guide your solutions and decisions:

• Strengths – What processes, resources, and other factors give us an advantage over competitors?
• Weaknesses – What holds us back from doing better and growing?
• Opportunities – What is happening outside the business that we can use to our advantage?
• Threats – What external factors can limit or hurt our success?

Business analysis example: SWOT

You can apply this technique to performance reviews, using the information you gain to help employees make improvements and celebrate strengths.

Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Tactics (MOST)

If you want to make sure your company is maintaining its main goals through every decision and transition, MOST is the best tactic to use. By analyzing your business based on the following elements, you can turn big-picture objectives into achievable actions.

• Mission – Your overarching purpose that defines everything you do.
• Objectives – The goals necessary to accomplish your mission.
• Strategies – What you need to do to reach your objectives.
• Tactics – How everyone in the organization can execute your strategies.

Business analysis steps: MOST

Starting from the top down, define these four elements for your business. Then, use them to create processes that prioritize your main goals throughout the organization.

Business analysis examples: MOST

When rebranding a company, the MOST technique helps you discover and refine the heart of your organization. You can realign your processes, products, and marketing efforts to reflect your goals more accurately. If your company has strayed from these primary values or shifted to new ones, MOST will help you clearly define your views and objectives.

Customers, Actors, Transformation, Worldview, Owner, Environmental constraints (CATWOE)

Your individual stakeholders’ viewpoints affect your goals and processes. Every change also affects all of your stakeholders. With CATWOE, you can understand how any action impacts your organization, customers, leadership, and more.

Business analysis steps: CATWOE

This technique should be used at the start of the project or strategizing process. Begin by defining these parties and asking these questions:

• Customers – Who benefits from your work and products? How does this issue or the proposed solution affect them?
• Actors – Who is directly involved in this process? How will they affect it?
• Transformation – What are the ultimate changes that will occur by implementing this solution or new procedures?
• Worldview – How will this change affect the organization’s mission and big picture?
• Owner – Who is responsible for the affected system and how are they related to it?
• Environmental constraints – On every level, what are the limitations that affect the solution?

Once you have these answers, use them to guide your strategies and final solutions.

Business analysis examples: CATWOE

If a development company wanted to build a new shopping center, they could use this technique to understand the impact it would have on the company, their future customers, and the people living in the surrounding community.

Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental (PESTLE)

Decisions and changes aren’t made in a vacuum. PESTLE identifies outside factors that will affect the decisions made within an organization, as well as how the company’s changes will impact other factors. This technique allows businesses to plan for any potential threats that might develop and strategize for seizing new opportunities.

Business analysis steps: PESTLE

Walk through the following list to determine the forces that can impact your organization.

• Political – How do government policies, initiatives, and financial support affect your business and your proposed solution?
• Economical – What is the economic climate and how does it affect you?
• Social – How do trends and attitudes concerning population, media, culture, lifestyle, and education affect the business?
• Technology – What is the rate of technological development, particularly for information and communication, and how does it impact your changes?
• Legal – Do local and national regulations and employment standards affect your work? How?
• Environmental – Are weather, pollution, waste, and recycling factors a concern for your organization? What is their impact?

Use this information to prepare for threats and opportunities that might affect your business’ ongoing performance.

Business analysis examples: PESTLE

When using the SWOT technique to evaluate your company’s direction and future, you can use PESTLE to develop and analyze each element of the process. This will help you create a more detailed understanding of your business, particularly concerning threats and opportunities.

Six Thinking Hats

Often, teams lack enough diverse viewpoints to find and understand the issues that are keeping them from full success. With the Six Thinking Hats technique , you can use different ways of thinking to uncover new perspectives. Using these new insights during brainstorming sessions can hone your team’s ideas for better results.

Business analysis steps: Six Thinking Hats

In your meetings, consider the problem and possible solutions with the type of thinking dictated by each “hat” and step.

• Start with the White Hat, which focuses on hard data and logic. What information do you know or need?
• Move to the Yellow Hat, which stands for brightness and positivity. Look for the possible values and benefits through optimistic thinking
• Now play devil’s advocate with the Black Hat of judgment. Find potential problems, obstacles, and threats.
• The Red Hat focuses on intuition. Share your feelings, fears, hunches, and emotions associated with the solution or process.
• Use the Green Hat of creativity to consider possibilities, thoughts, and ideas. Try to think outside the box.
• With the Blue Hat, you will bring your brainstorming back to earth. Consider the big picture of the project or changes. Ensure your ideas fit your operations and procedures.
• Use this process to hone your solutions and approach to problems.

Business analysis example: Six Thinking Hats

The next time you think your project needs fresh eyes, gather your team for a Six Thinking Hats brainstorming session. You will be able to view your work in a new light and uncover ways to improve.

There isn’t a “right” technique for business analysis. Instead, use these tactics as they best fit your objectives. And don’t be afraid to combine these techniques for a single problem. As you analyze your business through different lenses, you can find the solutions that will offer the greatest benefits.

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19 Decision Making Tools for Business

Updated on: 17 June 2024

In life, we make decisions every day. And in the context of running a business, decision making gets even more serious in nature, as the resulting outcome would affect a whole organization, its performance, its direction, or its employees.

Following are visual decision making tools that you can use during different stages of decision making. Each tool is provided with an editable template that you can click and customize online during your decision making process.

Decision Making Tools to Streamline the Decision Making Steps

The decision making process helps business managers find solutions to problems by exploring the different options available and selecting the best alternative out of them.

These decision making tools will help you accelerate the process by simplifying each step of the process.

1. Explore the Situation and Gather Information

Before you make a decision, you need to examine the situation or the issue that requires you to make a decision, in the first place. See who is affected, what caused it, and how you should approach it.

Stakeholder Analysis

Using a stakeholder analysis you can see who you should involve in the decision-making process.

You might have to rely on other stakeholders for their input in making the decision, in which case it’s better to conduct a stakeholder analysis to identify who you should get help from.

Root Cause Analysis

Now you know who to involve in the decision-making, it’s time to understand the situation you are dealing with. Two tools that can help you with this are the fishbone diagram and the 5 whys analysis.

Both of these tools help in getting to the origin of an issue and finding the root cause of things.

• Fishbone diagram or the cause and effect diagram is great with helping you isolate the root cause of a problem. Here’s how you can use this tool to solve business problems .   

• 5 Whys Analysis helps you narrow down the information you have gathered and find the last few causes of your problem by asking ‘why’ 5 times.

PEST Analysis

You can use the PEST analysis to evaluate the external environment and its impact on a decision. Analyze the Political, Economic, Social, and Technological factors affecting the decision.

2. Find Effective Alternatives

Once you have an idea about the situation or the issue, it is easier to generate alternative approaches to finding a solution. You can use the following decision-making tools to explore your options individually or in groups.  

Mind map is a powerful tool that helps you capture thoughts in your head or ideas thrown around during a group brainstorming session. You can also use it to categorize your options and further examine them by analyzing different related elements.

Pros and Cons List

The pros and cons list is a great tool for simple decision making scenarios. You can use it to list all the positive and negative aspects of each option to weigh them against each other.

Six Thinking Hats

Six thinking hats is another useful technique that provides direction to decision-making and group thinking.

It helps look at the situation you are analyzing from a range of perspectives and find alternative solutions from everyone involved.

Here’s how to use the six thinking hats technique .

Delphi Method

The Delphi Method is a process for reaching an agreement among experts. Experts answer questions in several rounds. After each round, their answers are summarized and shared with the group. Experts then review and adjust their answers based on the group’s feedback. This continues until the group agrees on the best answer.

Reframing Matrix

The reframing matrix is another tool that helps you look at business problems from a number of viewpoints.

It takes into consideration the different perspectives of several people with different experiences. This allows generating multiple creative solutions for the problem at hand.

You can use the 4 Ps approach when using the reframing matrix. When brainstorming solutions, look at the problem from these perspectives,

• Product perspective: Is there anything wrong with your product or service? With its quality or the estimated price? Does it fulfill the needs of the customers?
• Planning perspective: Is there anything wrong with your product plans, sales plans or marketing plans?
• People Perspective: Who are the people affected by the problem? What do they think?
• Potential Perspective: How can you increase the potential sales and marketing results? How can you boost productivity?  

Affinity Diagrams

Now that you have gathered a lot of information about the situation, you can use an affinity diagram to organize them into categories.

By doing so you and your team can quickly identify patterns or themes that will help analyze the situation easily.

3. Analyze Your Options

Now that you have come up with a number of different alternatives, it’s time to evaluate the desirability and the feasibility of the different options along with the risks that might be involved.

This is a simple tool that you can use to evaluate the pluses, minuses and implications or the Interesting things involved with your options. By comparing these aspects of each alternative option, you can decide which one is the best.

Risk Analysis

Most decisions you have to take involve risks, that’s why you need to assess the risks involved with them before you go ahead. This way you can take precautions.

Check out our post on Risk Management Techniques to get an idea about the types of tools you can use to evaluate the risks associated with your decisions.  

Force Field Analysis

Force field analysis is another powerful decision making tool that helps identify and analyze the forces for and against change or the implementation of a proposed solution.

Check out our article on the force field analysis to learn how to use the tool. Also, check out our guide on change management tools to facilitate change management.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

The cost-benefit analysis is used  to compare the costs and benefits of different choices. You can identify all costs and benefits associated with each option, quantify them, and compare the net benefits with it.

Pareto Analysis

Pareto Analysis is a decision making tool used to identify the most significant factors in a dataset. Based on the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule), it suggests that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. By focusing on these key causes, you can address the most impactful issues first.

Scenario Planning

Scenario analysis helps decision-makers make better choices by thinking about different possible futures and what they might mean. This way, they can be ready for whatever happens, making their decisions stronger and more adaptable, especially when things are uncertain and keep changing.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is used to analyze the internal factors such as strengths and weaknesses and external factors such as opportunities and threats affecting an organization.

You can use this decision making tool to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to your alternative options.

4. Select the Best Solution

Even after evaluating the desirability and the feasibility of the options, you might still end up with several good alternatives at hand. While you can apply a combination of them as your solution, this might not be practical all the time.

You can use the following decision making tools to decide which is the best option to move forward with.

Decision Trees

Decision tree diagram help visualize the alternative choices and every possible outcome related to them. It allows you to assess the value of outcomes and the possibilities of achieving them. This, in turn, helps make a better decision. Learn about using the decision tree diagram maker in more detail here.

Eisenhower Matrix

When you have different tasks to execute and can’t decide which one to go ahead with, you can use the Eisenhower matrix to decide what is important or not and what is urgent or not.

It will help you make more productive decisions by eliminating options that do not help you accomplish your goals.

Flowcharts are considered to be a proven method for documenting processes, brainstorming, evaluating, and identifying the best alternative possible.

Below is an example of a typical flowchart used in decision-making. This would help us evaluate the consequences of each alternative.

What Other Decision Making Tools Do You Use?

Here we have covered several decision making tools that you can use during the different stages of decision making. Whether you are doing it alone or with the help of a group of stakeholders, you can rely on these decision-making methods to make well-informed decisions faster.

What other decision making tools do you use to solve problems and make business decisions? Do let us know in the comment section below.

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Hey Amanda! This side is Riddhi Shah and I have just popped in one of your articles and really found it interesting. Running a business is a very difficult thing to do, as it requires the ability to make good decisions and to achieve spot at good rankings in the market. Business analyst are required to engage in as it is the main task that defines the current state of the business. One wrong decision can affect the entire company. Business intelligence tools help to structure the data and reveal important trends. The visual techniques and tools that has been mentioned in the article are very important and efficient. I have had a great time reading this informative article and definitely looking forward to reading more such blog posts from your end.

Hi Riddhi, Glad you found the post resourceful. Appreciate your feedback.

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[Full Guide] Strategic Planning Tools

Harry Foster

Published on Nov 25, 2022, updated on Jul 19, 2024

Every business needs to have a vision and an ultimate goal. However, these are not enough on their own. Strategic planning is a process that shows which strategy the company needs to adopt to achieve these objectives, and strategic planning tools can make it happen.

All strategic planning tools and techniques have different advantages and disadvantages. For this reason, they have found different applications, depending on the business and its industry. Therefore, you must carefully research the available strategic management tools at your disposal before you make your final choice.

In this article, we will get into more detail about several strategic planning tools and techniques that might cover your company’s needs. Then, you will be able to evaluate which one will be the best for you. In addition to this, you will also learn a great online tool that can help you with your strategic planning. Keep reading.

[Must Know] Strategic Planning Tools and Techniques

The first step to finding the best strategic planning tools for your business is to learn everything about it. Below, we will explain the different strategic planning tools and techniques so that you are fully aware of their different applications. We are dividing this port into tools and techniques so that it becomes easier to understand their differences.

8 Popular Strategic Planning Tools

First of all, we will talk about the most popular strategic planning tools. These are specific frameworks that can be combined to achieve the desired result.

#1 Visioning

One of the most popular strategic planning tools and techniques is undoubtedly visioning. This tool requires that you visualize the future of your company. The key component of this tool is brainstorming, and for this reason, you need to find a platform that facilitates the conversation between your team members.

Visioning is one of the most important strategic planning tools because it guides the organization as a whole in the desired direction. Both managers and employees can look back at this vision to remind themselves of their objectives.

#2 SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is one of the most popular strategic planning tools and techniques because it is very effective. During this analysis, you have to recognize the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your company. By listing them, you can start finding connections between them, which will help you find ways to help your company grow. This is one of the strategic management tools that are perfect for companies that need to find a competitive advantage to increase their market share.

#3 PESTLE Analysis

One of the greatest strategic planning tools and also techniques is PESTLE analysis. In fact, this is a tool that is often used in the SWOT analysis as the data you will get from it will help you identify potential threats and weaknesses. In this tool, you will be focusing on the external factors that immediately affect your business. Such factors are Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. However, in some cases, you might not need all of them, and so you can do the PEST analysis instead.

#4 Balanced Scorecard

One of the most well-known strategic planning tools is the balanced scorecard. The BSC is a great tool as it focuses on both operational and financial factors. For this reason, it allows you to get a holistic view of your business. Moreover, this is one of the strategic management tools that specify objectives, measures, and initiatives. What’s great about the balanced scorecard is that it allows you to divide your big-picture goals into smaller objectives that you can actually measure.

#5 Hoshin Planning

If you are looking at the most popular strategic planning tools and techniques, you will surely notice Hoshin planning. This tool applies a top-down approach to your organization as a whole, from your big-picture objectives to your specific projects and tasks. By doing this, you ensure that all of your processes align with each other, thus working towards the same goal. There is no denying that this is one of the strategic planning tools that you need to explore.

#6 VRIO Framework

The VRIO framework is one of the strategic management tools that keeps gaining popularity. The word stands for Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Organizational. In essence, this tool has been specifically designed so that you can determine what your company’s competitive advantage is. Furthermore, you can also study your resources to find a way to turn them to your advantage. The way to use this strategic planning tool is to ensure that your resources have all the VRIO factors.

#7 Objectives and Key Results (OKR)

One of the most widely used strategic planning tools and techniques is none other than objectives and key results, or OKR. This is one of the easiest-to-understand strategic management tools as it measures the success of the strategy based on specific objectives and key results. With this tool, you will constantly be setting goals, which you must also evaluate. This enables you to react to any changes and adapt to an ever-changing market.

#8 Competitor Analysis

No one can deny that one of the most popular strategic planning tools is competitor analysis. Your competition affects your company’s growth, and so, you should always study what the other businesses in your industry are doing. Both their successes and failures can guide you so that you find the most efficient strategy. For this reason, a competitor analysis has been proven as one of the most valuable strategic planning tools and techniques that you can use.

5 Strategic Planning Models

The strategic management tools that we have analyzed above can be combined to bring you the answers you were looking for. However, the techniques and models that you choose will affect your decision as to which strategic planning tools you should select. The most prominent strategic planning models are the following:

#1 Basic Model

One of the most standard strategic management tools is the basic model. This is ideal for startups and small businesses as it helps you form your vision and objectives. Once you start gaining more experience, you can implement various strategic planning tools into this model. By doing this, you will refine your goals and objectives.

#2 Self-organizing Model

This is one of the most complex and time-consuming strategic tools and techniques. When you adopt this model, you let your company’s values define your strategy, rather than focusing on specific metrics and goals. This is a model that is most suited for big organizations that can afford this natural self-organizing.

#3 Strategic Alignment Model

Another one is the strategic alignment model. In essence, this model tries to make your internal processes and your strategic goals align. It considers your strategy execution, technology potential, competitive potential, and service level. This is one of the strategic planning tools and techniques that can help businesses refine and reassess their objectives.

#4 Scenario Model

The scenario model is the one that works perfectly with the other models in this list. For instance, you can use it with the basic model. This is one of the strategic planning tools and techniques that considers the various external factors that influence the company. Then, you imagine the worst-case scenario and possible solutions. This is the reason why this is one of the most helpful strategic management tools for small businesses and startups.

#5 Real-Time Strategic Planning Model

The last one is the real-time model. This is one of the strategic planning tools that change over time as it works reactively on three levels, which are the organizational, the programmatic, and the operational. This is one of the strategic management tools for businesses in rapidly changing industries.

Boardmix - Your Best Strategic Management Tool

Right now, you have access to one of the greatest strategic management tools, which is called Boardmix. This is an online platform that works as a virtual whiteboard and gives you access to a variety of high-quality features. What sets this app apart from other strategic management tools is that it enhances productivity and collaboration between team members.

Boardmix earns its reputation because it brings the functions you need to achieve your goals and complete your projects effectively. Namely, you can use Boardmix to brainstorm, exchange files, give feedback, and even organize online meetings. Furthermore, the app is perfect for diagramming and mapping thanks to the preset templates, which are ideal for your strategic planning.

Just try Boardmix now and manage your strategy in a better way!

The Bottom Line

When it comes to strategic planning tools, there are many things that you need to consider. Every tool and technique focuses on a different element that can help your business. For this reason, you must research your options carefully to make the most effective decision for your strategy.

No matter the strategic tools that you might use, Boardmix is the best app to keep track of your progress. With a variety of features and functions, it is the perfect platform to bring your team together and form your strategy. Try the app today to discover its powerful features!

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Module 3: Planning and Mission

Types of plans and common planning tools, learning outcomes.

• Differentiate between the uses of long-term plans, short-term plans, and operational plans.
• Differentiate between standing plans and single-use plans.
• Explain how policies, procedures, and regulations impact operational plans.
• Explain the role of budgets in the planning process.
• Differentiate between forecasting, scenario planning, and contingency planning.
• Explain the use of “management by objectives” (MBO), SMART goals, and benchmarking in planning.

You can view the transcript for “Long term and short term planning animated” here (opens in new window) .

Watch the short animated video for a brief overview of the importance of long-term and short-term planning.

Long-term and Short-term Plans

When you decided to attend college, you had a long-term plan in mind. You would spend the next four or five years preparing to become a teacher, a businessperson, or perhaps an ecologist. Or, you may have committed two or three years to become a nurse, a medical technician, or an electrician. Your long-term goal was necessary to make sure that your daily activities would help you achieve your desired outcome. You could have just enrolled in a school and taken classes that looked interesting, but then where would you be in four years? You most likely would not have taken the courses required to qualify you for the job you want. An organization, especially a business, is not so different. It also needs a long-term plan to make sure that the daily activities of its employees are contributing to the mission and value statements of the organization.

A long-term plan is crucial to the ultimate success of the organization. A long-term plan for many businesses, such as construction, hospitality, or manufacturing, generally extends four to five years into the future. For other faster-changing industries, especially technology companies, a long-term plan may only look two or three years into the future. After that, it becomes too difficult to predict the future with any degree of certainty.

Top management is responsible for the development of the long-term plan. It is up to the CEO to make sure that changing conditions (both external and internal) are reflected in the organization’s long-term plan. The larger and more complex the organization, the larger and more complex the long-term plan will be to include all of the individual departments and functions.

Short-term plans generally allocate resources for a year or less. They may also be referred to as operational plans because they are concerned with daily activities and standard business operations. Like long-term plans, short-term plans must be monitored and updated, and this is the role of middle- and first-level management. Different managerial levels have responsibility for implementing different types of short-term plans. For example, a department manager may be comfortable implementing an operational plan for the entire year for her department. A marketing manager may direct a three- to four-month plan that involves the introduction of a new product line. A team leader may only be comfortable planning and implementing very specific activities over the period of a month.

Figure 1. Organizational Plan Hierarchy: The figure above summarizes the relationship between these types of management planning

Practice Question

Operational plans: standing plans and single-use plans.

An operational plan describes the specific goals and objectives and milestones set by an organization during a specific period. ( Objectives are specific tasks undertaken to meet broader goals. A goal may be to increase product sales by 3 percent; an objective may be to hire two additional sales agents.) It will allocate the tangible resources (labor, equipment, space) and authorize the financing necessary to meet the objectives of the plan. There are two types of operational plans: standing plans and single-use plans.

• Standing plans are plans designed to be used again and again. Examples include policies, procedures, and regulations. The advantage of standing plans is that they foster unity and fairness within an organization and help to support stated organizational values. Managers don’t have to make unique decisions already addressed by various organizational policies. Standing plans also save time because managers know in advance how to address common situations. Finally, standing plans aid in the delegation of work, because employees are already familiar with the procedures and regulations followed by the organization.
• Single-use plans refer to plans that address a one-time project or event. The length of the plans varies, but the most common types are budgets and project schedules. The obvious advantage of a single-use plan is that it can be very specific in how it addresses the needs of a particular situation.

PRactice Question

Policies, procedures, and regulations.

As stated above, the most common examples of standing use plans are policies, procedures, and regulations. These plans are usually published and handed out to new hires or posted on the organization’s employee website for easy reference.

• Policies provide broad guidelines for the smooth operation of the organization. They cover things like hiring and firing, performance appraisals, promotions, and discipline. For example, a company may have a policy to encourage recycling in the workplace or a policy that prohibits personal cell phone use in manufacturing areas.
• Procedures are steps to be followed in established and repeated operations. Procedures should reflect the policies of the company and support the organization’s long-term goals. Procedures may also detail steps that should be followed to ensure employees are disciplined in a fair and unbiased manner. For example, if employees feel that other employees interacted with them in an inappropriate manner, then they should follow the procedure for bringing this to management’s attention. Or, the organization may establish procedures for what to do in cases of emergencies, such as a fire or toxic spill.
• Regulations refer to what is allowable and what is strictly prohibited in an organization. In other words, a regulation is a kind of rule that addresses general situations. In many hospitals and laboratories, for example, there are safety regulations against wearing open-toed shoes or shoes with slippery soles. State and federal governments frequently issue regulations for industries that impact public safety.

The Role of Budgets in the Planning Process

Refer back to Figure 1 and locate the box labeled “Budgets.” Notice that budgets are examples of single-use, short-term plans. An organization’s budget is a document that details the financial and physical resources allocated to a project or department. They are single-use plans because they are specific to a particular period or event. For example, departments may have a hiring budget that allocates a certain number of positions and a total salary value for a calendar year. Next year, that budget may be the same or it may change, depending upon conditions in the organization. But it cannot be assumed that the budget will stay the same. Zero-based budgets look at each budget as if it were brand new and require managers to justify each of the budgeted items. This process ensures that budgets are closely tied to the latest organizational goals.

Managers deal with a variety of budget types:

• Financial budgets include balance sheets, income/expense statements, and statements of cash flow.
• Operating budgets project revenue against expenditures.
• Nonmonetary budgets allocate resources such as labor, workspace, and equipment use.
• Fixed budgets are budgets that do not change with increased or decreased activities, such as sales revenue. They are also called static budgets.
• Flexible budgets will vary with the level of activity (grow or be reduced according to changing conditions).

Budgets are a very important planning tool, and organizations take their budgeting process very seriously. Some managers spend most of their time making sure that the expenses and projects they control do not exceed authorized spending limits. To routinely “go over budget” is a sign of a poor planning—and planning is one of the basic management functions. In some cases, to routinely come in under budget is also viewed negatively, because with more accurate budgeting those committed resources could have been allocated to other projects. Often, projects compete for limited resources so the best budget is the one that most closely projects actual expenses and revenue.

Forecasting, Scenario Planning, and Contingency Planning

Forecasting is simply making a prediction about the future. Anyone can make a forecast—the trick is to be right or close enough so that important planning decisions can be based on the forecast. Some “botched” forecasts by business leaders follow:

“This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” – President of Western Union, 1876

“There is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Chairman of IBM, 1943

“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Darryl Zanuck, president of 20th Century Fox, 1946

“There is no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 2012

There are actually much better ways to predict the future than resorting to fortunetellers.

Scientific forecasting is using mathematical models, historical data, and statistical analysis to make predictions about what will happen in the future. Businesses use short-term forecasting all the time when creating budgets and anticipating expenses. Mostly, these forecasts are based on what they sold and what they paid providers in the recent past. Long-range forecasting requires both quantitative numerical data and qualitative data based on expert opinions and insights. Often, organizations will create a number of long-range forecasts based on “best-case” and “worst-case” scenarios. They will then make plans on how they would respond to each situation and, as time goes on, they will update and adapt the long-term plan.

Scenario planning takes into account alternative futures. Managers consider using different strategies under varying economic conditions. This type of planning typically involves gradual change. For example, a non-profit organization that relies upon donations will have different plans for times when the economy is booming and donors have more discretionary income versus times of recession when people tend to cut back on spending.

In contrast,  contingency planning addresses sudden market change or business disruptions. Usually, contingency plans are designed to handle emergency situations. For example, airports have contingency plans for plane crashes on takeoffs or landings, and popular tourist attractions have begun developing contingency plans in case of terrorist threats.

An example of the critical importance of contingency planning involves the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Eleven people lost their lives and seventeen were badly injured when an explosion on an oil rig released almost five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst marine oil spill in history, and its effects were even more devastating because BP Oil did not have contingency plans in place for that kind of disaster. The spill went on for months while BP and its partners tried to figure out how to shut off the oil’s source. Even though BP spent $62 billion on the response and cleanup activities, there was extensive damage to marine and wildlife habitats and fishing and tourism industries. Getting employees involved in planning may help prevent tragedies similar to this one.

Practice QUestion

Management by objectives (mbo) and smart goals.

Management by objectives , or MBO for short, is a tool that can be used to improve the performance of an organization by creating clearly defined objectives agreed upon by management and by the employees. Peter Drucker, a prolific author and a leader in management theory, coined the phrase “management by objectives” in 1954. The intent of MBO is to improve employee motivation and organizational communication by focusing on aligning individual goals to corporate objectives. In MBO, a manager and an employee do the following:

• jointly set goals and objectives for a period.
• together plan tasks that the employee performs with the support of management.
• agree on the standards for evaluating performance of the task.
• regularly meet to review progress.

MBO must be a top-down management tool, because organizational goals are cascaded down to create the various operational levels. Drucker showed that as long as employee goals support short-term and long-term organizational objectives, MBO will help move the company forward. Critics, however, charge that managers using the approach focus more on creating goals than on helping the employee achieve them.

SMART goals are a technique often paired with MBO. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. The SMART goal paired well with MBO theory by

• Providing incentives to employees by rewarding them when they meet key goals.
• Empowering employees by allowing them to set their own objectives for achieving their individual goal.
• Communicating honestly about what went well and what did not, and focusing on developing the missing skills.

The chart that follows summarizes the most important characteristics of each part of a SMART goal.

For example, let’s say you set a goal to become a recognized department expert in a subject relevant to advancement within the organization. How could you turn this into a SMART goal?

• Specific: I will learn about the liabilities of six major nonprofit organizations.
• Measurable: I will make presentations to the advertising, grant writing, and donor/client committees.
• Achievable: I will interview one nonprofit organization every week for six weeks.
• Relevant: This expertise will fill a current knowledge gap in the new client department.
• Time-bound: I will fulfill this goal before my next scheduled annual performance evaluation.

Benchmarking

The last planning tool we’ll discuss in this section is benchmarking. You may think that your organization has an excellent long-term plan and effective short-term plans, but how do you really know? Even if your company is showing growth, is it growing as fast as your competitor? A benchmark is a standard used for comparison purposes. Benchmarking is looking at performance levels outside of your organization, or sometimes across departments or divisions inside your organization, to evaluate your own performance. You can benchmark using several different criteria:

• Industry: Let’s say you produce technology widgets. Benchmarking can answer questions about how your company is doing in comparison to other tech widget makers. This approach is a type of competitive benchmarking.
• Geography: Your state is showing a lot of economic growth. You can use benchmarking to determine if your company is sharing in that wealth or underperforming compared to the regional economy.
• Organization: You are a small business owner. Benchmarking can help answer questions about whether the economic climate is friendlier to big business than it is to small business, or whether nonprofits are failing whereas for-profits are succeeding.
• Processes: You can use benchmarking to determine what processes other firms are using that are helping or hurting them. Are there lessons to be learned from them? This is also called strategic benchmarking or process benchmarking.
• Innovation: Benchmarking can help you discover what partners or techniques your competitors are using that are missing in your organization. Are there functions in your products or programs that should be eliminated and others that could be added? Functional benchmarking is key in technology-related organizations.

Internal benchmarking means comparing a department’s performance with another department in your company or branch within the same larger organization. The important thing about benchmarking is that it gives you a standard against which to compare your progress.

Planning tools are designed to help you determine goals, guide behaviors within the organization, and help you evaluate your performance against external benchmarks. Plans are essential, but good managers know to be flexible when conditions demand.

• Types of Plans and Planning Tools. Authored by : John/Lynn Bruton and Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Image: Organizational Plan Hierarchy. Authored by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Image: PsychicBoston. Authored by : John Stephen Dwyer. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PsychicBoston.jpg . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• description of scenario planning. Authored by : Pro CFO Partners. Located at : https://procfopartners.com/goals-strategies/scenario-planning-vs-contingency-planning-for-not-for-profit-organizations/ . License : All Rights Reserved
• Long term and short term planning animated. Authored by : Artem Nedoshepa. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De0HyiqRXIU . License : All Rights Reserved

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10 Project Planning Techniques To Take Your Plans to the Next Level

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. I'm a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut!

Whether you're refining your current processes or seeking to innovate, these 10 project planning techniques can bring an extra bit of clarity, efficiency, and brilliance to your workflows.

Project planning isn't just a phase—it's the backbone of successful project management. While all managers have their go-to methods, changing times and shifting project landscapes call for a continuous upgrade in our toolkits. 

So, whether you're refining your current processes or searching for innovative techniques to take your plans to the next level, the right project planning software and techniques bring an extra bit of clarity, efficiency, and brilliance. 

10 Project Planning Techniques to Know

Diving into project planning can be overwhelming, but the right techniques can be game-changers for your project team and all stakeholders. Here are 10 of the most useful methods that every project manager should know:

1. Critical Path Method

What it is: Ever looked at your project and thought, "Where do I even start?" Enter the critical path method (CPM). Think of it as your project's compass, guiding you through the most crucial tasks that lead straight to your end goal.

How it works: tasks are plotted out like stops on a subway map with arrows (our tracks) showing the sequence and interdependencies to identify the shortest possible duration. And much like a subway rush hour, if one station faces delays, it's going to ripple through the line. 

Why use it? CPM lets you predict potential hiccups by calculating early and late start/finish times for every task. The upshot? You see your project's life cycle , pinpoint those mega-important tasks, and prep resources in advance.

2. Critical Chain Method

What it is: While CPM is all about the task path, the critical chain method (CCM) is its savvy sibling that says, "Wait a minute, what about the resources?" It's a method that puts resource constraints center stage, realizing that even the best-laid plans can get derailed when the tools or team aren't available.

How it works: First, we've got our critical path. Picture it as the backbone of your project—the stack of pivotal individual tasks that can’t start until the preceding one ends. It's the non-negotiable sequence of task dependencies.

Then there’s the resource aspect. CCM urges you to spot potential bottlenecks and gear up in advance. Think about it: if one task is resource-intensive, you can't just jump into the next dependent task. Proper prep here ensures you're not left scrambling, especially when up against a strict time frame.

Why use it? The CCM magic is resource buffers. These are your safety nets. Whether it's extra days tacked on to absorb any delays or a pool of resources kept on standby, these buffers are your insurance against unpredictability.

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3. Work Breakdown Structure

What it is: Think of a work breakdown structure (WBS) as your project's family tree. Starting big and branching out into finer details, WBS is that friend who loves to categorize everything. Whether mapping out deliverables, sub-tasks, or breaking your project into phases, this task management technique is ideal.

How it woks: For those quick and snappy projects, a deliverable-based WBS slices your work into bite-sized tasks. Got a marathon project on your hands? A phase-based approach is your go-to, helping you navigate the long haul. 

Why use it? WBS is your assurance that no stone is left unturned, helping you dodge those sneaky scope creeps , dish out roles, and stay on track.

4. Cost Breakdown Structure

What it is: The cost breakdown structure (CBS) is the financial guru of the project world. Imagine being able to see, at a glance, where every dollar is going. That's CBS for you, categorizing costs from labor and materials to overhead, making sure your project doesn't burn a hole in your pocket.

How it works: This technique breaks down your budget like a pie chart, showing you exactly where your cash is headed. Notice a spending spree in one area? CBS helps you catch it before it becomes a budgetary black hole. 

Why use it? By giving you a ringside seat to your project's finances, it empowers you to pull the reins in on overspending, reallocate funds, and make sure every penny is put to good use. CBS isn’t just about keeping an eye on spending; it’s about ensuring every dollar works as hard as you do.

5. Gantt Charts

What it is: The poster child of project planning is the Gantt chart . It's that vibrant, visual map of your project's journey, laying out tasks, timelines, and everything in between. It's the best way to see a project’s life story at a glance.

How it works: On a Gantt chart, each task is represented by a bar; the position and length of the bar reflect the start date, duration, and end date of the task, facilitating an easy understanding of the project schedule and dependencies.

Why use it? By plotting out tasks against time, Gantt charts bring your project to life in technicolor. You'll spot overlaps, see who's doing what, and even find those precious moments of downtime. But it's not all about pretty visuals. With a Gantt chart in your toolkit, you're equipped with a roadmap to success. 

6. Scrum 

What it is: Scrum is a methodology that offers guiding principles and processes aimed at enhancing outcomes. It's especially popular within software development, and stands out for its emphasis on flexibility, teamwork, and making steady, iterative progress towards clear objectives.

How it works: The Scrum process is driven by Sprints: short, time-boxed periods where teams complete select tasks. Daily meetings ensure alignment, while end-of-Sprint reviews and retrospectives foster continued improvement.

Why use it? The real beauty of this methodology is that five or ten days is all that's required to take a project form an idea to the testing phase.

What it is: The Scaled Agile Framework is a set of organization and workflow patterns that guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices. It's designed to provide a flexible and comprehensive model for large-scale, complex projects, integrating agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, and Lean thinking to promote alignment, collaboration, and delivery.

How it works: SAFe is visualized as a multi-layered framework in project planning, with each layer representing different levels of the organization like Team, Program, Large Solution, and Portfolio. This visualization facilitates the alignment of strategy with execution, showing how different teams contribute.

Why use it? Essentially, SAFe can help you coordinate efforts, manage risks, and maintain a focus on continuous improvement and delivery at scale.

8. Kanban 

What it is: Kanban is a popular project management method that originated from lean manufacturing principles, particularly from the Toyota Production System. It emphasizes continuous delivery without overburdening the development team, and is useful when tasks vary in priority and complexity.

How it works: Kanban is visualized using a board and cards, where each card represents a task, and the board is divided into columns that represent different stages of the process, such as "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done."

Why use it? Kanban is teams to visualize their work, limit work-in-progress, and maximize flow. By focusing on completing current tasks before taking on new ones, it helps reduce bottlenecks and manage workloads.

9. Risk Management Planning 

What it is: Risk management planning is a critical component of project planning that involves identifying, analyzing, and responding to potential risks that can impact a project's success. This not only minimizes the likelihood and impact of negative events, but capitalizes on opportunities that may arise.

How it works: It involves systematically identifying risks (such as financial uncertainties, legal liabilities, strategic management errors, and accidents), assessing their potential impact, and developing strategies to manage them.

Why use it? It will help you in developing contingency plans, allocating resources for risk mitigation, and continuously monitoring risks throughout the project lifecycle. This all helps in ensuring that projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the desired quality standards, while improving resilience.

What it is: The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a project planning tool used for managing and scheduling complex projects. Developed in the 1950s for the U.S. Navy's Polaris submarine project, (yes, really) PERT involves creating a flowchart (known as a PERT chart) that outlines the tasks required for project completion, estimated durations, and dependencies.

How it works: PERT employs a probabilistic approach to time estimates, using optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely completion times for each task.

Why use it? PERT is great for projects with a high degree of uncertainty. This allows project managers such as yourself to identify critical paths (the longest stretch of dependent activities) and potential bottlenecks. By doing so, PERT helps in effective scheduling, resource allocation , and risk management, ensuring more accurate time estimations and efficient project execution.

Read more about how PERT compares to CPM .

What Are Project Planning Techniques?

Project planning techniques are your go-to strategies when mapping out how to tackle a project. Think of them as your toolbox—each is a different tool that helps you stay on track, use your resources wisely, and meet deadlines.

Remember when Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”? That guy was onto something. In our world of project management, a little preparation can go a long, long way. By selecting the right techniques for your project, you can set up a successful project plan .

What is Project Planning?

Project planning is that crucial stage where you're mapping out your game plan. It's like laying out the blueprint before building a house. This phase is all about setting up your project's trajectory, leaning into project management techniques , knowing where you're headed, and how to get there.

Project Planning Tools

So, you've got the techniques down, but let's not forget about the tools that make our project planning lives a whole lot easier. 

First up, project management software solutions . From intuitive dashboards that give you a bird’s eye view of your project's progress to handy notification systems that ensure no task or milestone goes unnoticed—these tools are the backbone of modern project planning. 

Need to collaborate in real-time with your team? There's an app for that. Looking to track those ever-so-important KPIs ? You bet there's a way. Worried about keeping up with the project schedule ? There’s a tool for that too.

Then we have project management templates . Instead of starting from scratch, these ready-to-use frameworks save you time, energy, and a whole lot of head-scratching. You might find our project plan template useful!

And who could forget communication tools ? Keeping everyone on the same page isn't easy. Whether it’s video conferencing for in-depth strategy sessions, a chat tool for quick check-ins, or feedback platforms to gather team insights, the right PM tools ensure your project runs like a well-oiled machine.

Each of these integrations help to improve functionality, prioritize project scope , and implement a step-by-step process that brings success.

Check out our master list of the best project planning tools here .

10 Best Project Planning Tools Shortlist

Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 10 tools reviewed.

• 1. monday.com — Best for Google users (G Suite and so on)
• 2. Kantata — Best for resource management and planning
• 3. Productive — Best for agencies
• 4. Hub Planner — Best for DPMs interested in resource allocation vs project budgets
• 5. Resource Guru — Best for efficient resource scheduling
• 6. ClickUp — Best for team collaboration and communication
• 7. Scoro — Best for integrated project and financial planning
• 8. Quickbase — Best for dynamic work management
• 9. Zoho Projects — Best for team scalability
• 10. Runn — Best for IT and software teams

Mastering The Project Planning Game

As we wrap up our deep dive into this project planning guide , a few key takeaways become clear:

• successful projects aren’t about chance—they're about choice. The choice to adopt effective techniques, harness tools, and remain committed.
• There's a project planning technique suited to any project you need to plan
• There's always room for continuous improvement. Don't be afraid to play around or try a new project planning technique. You've got this!

Stay in the know for all your project management needs by subscribing to The Digital Project Manager newsletter or join the community with a membership .

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7 Essential Project Management Techniques In 2024

Updated: Jun 18, 2024, 9:05am

Table of Contents

1. work breakdown structure (wbs), 2. critical path method (cpm), 3. waterfall, 6. gantt chart, frequently asked questions (faqs).

Top project managers use proven project management techniques to successfully manage a project. A project management technique is a framework or tool that helps plan, organize and execute a project. There are many project management techniques available. The best one for you depends on the size, complexity and objectives of your project as well as the makeup of your team.

In this article, we discuss the top project management techniques so you can choose the best one for your needs.

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Work breakdown structure (WBS) is a project management technique that segments larger projects into more manageable deliverables. WBS organizes your project by tree-like hierarchy, with your overall project objective at the top. From there, dependencies of the parent objective are identified, and at the bottom, these dependencies are broken down into specific tasks.

WBS is a visual project management technique that typically uses workflow management software or Kanban boards to manage the dependencies and tasks of a project. WBS is great for defining a project’s scope, identifying dependencies, estimating timelines and costs, assigning tasks to team members and tracking the project’s overall progress.

The WBS project management technique is therefore best for larger, more complex projects that need to be broken down into smaller parts. This is because complex projects typically have many dependencies and subtasks, and WBS is great at identifying and planning for them.

The critical path method (CPM) is a project management framework used to identify the longest sequence of critical activities necessary to complete a project on time. This “critical path” represents the shortest time possible for completing a project. Each activity on the critical path is sequential, meaning that any delays in a critical task will delay the overall project.

The CPM method is used to identify the most important tasks of a project, uncover sequential task dependencies and calculate a task duration for each critical activity. From there, you can calculate an overall project timeline based on the duration of each critical task. The critical path is typically represented as a visual diagram that includes all sequential task dependencies and their time estimates, helping you manage the overall project.

The CPM project management technique is great to use when you’re managing a complex project where time is the most important or limiting factor. It’s also a great technique to use if you’re managing a project with a lot of linear task dependencies. This differs slightly from the work breakdown structure technique, which is better when you have a project with separate sets of dependencies you can work on at the same time.

The Waterfall project management technique is a leading methodology that helps you manage a linear project. With this technique, a project is broken down into sequential stages, with each stage needing to be completed before moving on to the next step. The Waterfall method provides a clear plan from the start and identifies dependencies before the project begins. However, it’s a rigid technique that may prove challenging if your project scope or objectives change over time.

There are six stages of the Waterfall method, which include the following:

• Requirements gathering: Project information is gathered during this stage to help stakeholders craft a detailed project plan .
• Design: Using software as an example, this stage outlines design needs including coding languages, software architecture, user interfaces and required hardware.
• Implementation: Continuing with the software example, this is the stage where you actually develop the software based on your design and requirements.
• Verification: With the software built, the next stage is to test and debug it to ensure your product is working properly.
• Deployment: Once the software is working properly, it’s time to make it available to your customers.
• Maintenance: This stage represents the ongoing process of keeping your software updated and free of defects in order to improve performance.

The Waterfall project management technique is best for projects that aren’t expected to change over time and need clear direction from the start. However, projects that need flexibility throughout the project timeline should consider another technique such as Scrum, below.

The Scrum project management technique is an Agile framework that helps you manage a project in short cycles called “sprints.” Each sprint lasts roughly one or two weeks, with daily stand-up meetings to keep team members on track. At the start of each sprint, the team commits to completing a certain amount of tasks. At the end of each sprint, the team meets for a longer retrospective and then plans for the next sprint based on the completed tasks.

Scrums are led by a “product owner” who keeps track of an overall project backlog of tasks using a Scrum board . A Scrum board is a visual representation of your project broken down into specific columns: Project Backlog, Sprint Backlog, In Progress, Review and Done. Tasks are represented as cards that move through these columns.

Each sprint, tasks are moved from the Project Backlog to the Sprint Backlog. When a team member starts a new task, it’s moved to In Progress. Once it’s completed, the task is reviewed and moved to the Done column.

The product owner will conduct periodic backlog grooming to ensure the project backlog remains up to date based on the work completed. For this reason, Scrum is a great technique for projects that may change over time and need shorter feedback loops, as with software development.

Kanban is a lean project management framework that helps project managers and team members manage their workflow and eliminate waste. Kanban boards are used to visualize your workflow with columns. Tasks are represented as cards on your board. As tasks are completed, your cards move through the various columns of your workflow to mark them done.

Kanban boards are essentially simpler versions of Scrum boards and often use the same project management software . Typically, a Kanban board is broken down into three columns: To-Do, Doing and Done. This helps project managers and team members limit the number of tasks they’re working on at any one time to increase focus.

Kanban is a great technique for visualizing your workflow, managing tasks and identifying work-in-progress limits. Similar to Scrum, it’s a flexible project management technique that’s great for projects that require flexibility and may change over time.

A Gantt chart is a horizontal bar chart used by project managers to visualize project tasks and the timeline required to complete each one. Gantt charts consist of three components: the tasks of a project, the start date of each task and the end date of each task. These tasks are then organized on the X axis sequentially, with a bar for each task representing its start and end date on the Y axis. Gantt charts are typically created in a tool such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

The program evaluation and review technique (PERT) is a project management technique and tool used to estimate a project’s timeline. It’s seen as a more complex version of a Gantt chart or the critical path method (CPM). The PERT technique first identifies the tasks of a project and calculates three time estimates for each task: the optimistic time, the pessimistic time and the most likely time.

From there, the three time estimates are used to create a weighted average estimate for each task. Then, a critical path of necessary tasks is identified and the weighted average time estimates are used to calculate the overall project timeline. Once the critical path is identified, a flowchart is created to show the relationship between tasks rather than sequentially. PERT can be more accurate than a Gantt chart or the critical path method (CPM) when assessing a project’s timeline. However, it’s more complex than both techniques and should only be used for projects with a lot of uncertainty where multiple time estimates are necessary to come up with an average.

Bottom Line

Project management techniques represent the top frameworks and tools to help you manage a project successfully. There are many project management techniques to choose from, each with benefits and drawbacks. When choosing the right technique for you, ensure you’re accurately assessing your project scope, complexity, requirements and team.

What’s the difference between a project management methodology and technique?

A project management methodology is a guiding set of principles that help you manage a project. Meanwhile, a project management technique is a framework that gives you specific processes or tools to implement your chosen methodology. Some methodologies, including Waterfall, provide both principles and techniques, while others such as Agile simply provide the principles and have separate techniques that others have created.

What are the top project management methodologies?

The top project management methodologies include the Waterfall, Agile and lean methodologies. Lesser-used methodologies include PRINCE2, Six Sigma and more.

What are the basic project management techniques?

Basic project management techniques include frameworks or tools based on the lean or Agile methodologies. These techniques include Kanban and Scrum, most helpful for projects that require flexibility and shorter feedback loops.

What are the advanced project management techniques?

Advanced project management techniques include the Waterfall method, critical path method (CPM), program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and more. These techniques are best suited for complex projects with numerous dependencies or those where time is the limiting factor.

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Evan is a writer and entrepreneur with a background in technology and content marketing. He is currently the Head of Growth at Sagetap.io. Previous to Sagetap, he was was co-founder & CEO of the online publication Selling Signals, which was acquired in 2022, and served as General Manager for the online publication Fit Small Business.

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13 Essential Business Development Tools for 2023

Developing new business opportunities for a company is hard work, especially if you’re doing everything manually.

Luckily, there are a number of tools you can use to simplify or automate various aspects of business development. In this blog post, we go over the best business development tools available in 2023.

Prospecting tools

Prospecting tools help you discover more people who could be a good fit for your product or service.

They can save time for your business development team by automating tasks such as finding prospects’ contact information, creating custom prospect lists , and syncing prospect information to your CRM software.

Hunter offers a set of tools that can help you simplify and automate the process of finding prospects’ email addresses.

You can use the Email Finder to input a prospect’s name and website and get their email address in seconds. Alternatively, you can upload a list of prospects and find their email addresses in bulk.

The Domain Search provides you with a list of email addresses associated with a specific domain. These are retrieved from public sources on the web.

You can then filter the email addresses by department, save them to a lead list, or export them to your CRM tool. Each email address is assigned a confidence score that tells you how likely it is that it’s the prospect’s actual email address.

Domain Search also lets you know the most commonly used email address pattern for a domain so that you can try guessing the email address of the person you’re trying to reach if Hunter didn’t manage to find it.

Hunter also offers a Chrome extension you can use to find the email addresses associated with any website you visit and a Google Sheets add-on that can help you find and verify email addresses from within Google Sheets.

Once you have the prospects’ email addresses, you can verify them using the Email Verifier to eliminate bounces and improve email deliverability . The Email Verifier makes multiple checks to ensure an email address is valid, including checking the format, MX records, SMTP server, and more.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Are you already using LinkedIn? LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a business development tool that allows you to gain access to advanced lead and company search features.

You can search for prospects using various criteria, including industry, company size, and job role.

The tool can also provide you with lead recommendations and real-time updates on your prospects. You can create custom lead lists, add notes and tags to prospects and leads, and sync these to your CRM software.

CallPage is a conversational marketing software that helps to turn website visitors into sales calls. It offers a click-to-call widget that can be installed on any website using simple HTML code.

Once a website visitor enters their phone number, CallPage will automatically connect them with an assigned consultant in seconds. Website visitors can also decide that they want to get a call back later, and CallPage will automatically connect them with your sales team at a scheduled time.

The widget can be customized to fit the look and feel of your website. Thanks to scoring rules, you can decide when the CallPage pop-ups should be visible to the user.  All calls coming from the widget are later available in the CallPage app.

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools help businesses streamline their business development process by allowing them to store and organize information on their customers and prospects, as well as all the deals and opportunities associated with them.

Close is our CRM tool of choice here at Hunter. It allows you to store any type of data on your prospects and customers and offers free data migration from other CRM tools.

You can connect it to your email account and sync your entire history with each lead, as well as send and receive emails from within Close. There’s also the option to set up automated follow-up email sequences for leads to ensure deals keep moving forward.

Close comes with cold calling features, including a power dialer and a predictive dialer. You can use it to make outbound calls to more than 200 countries and get a local phone number in a country of your choice.

There are options to record and review calls, as well as set up automated voicemail drops. The tool also supports real-time call coaching with whisper, listen, and barge features.

Close offers detailed sales reporting and analytics. You can see the number of new leads, calls made, emails sent, opportunities generated, and deals won and lost at a glance.

There’s also the option to create a custom dashboard with metrics that matter the most to you.

Copper allows you to organize contacts and everything associated with them, including calls, emails, and notes. It gives you a complete overview of your relationship history with each contact.

The tool can pull in contact details (such as phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profiles) automatically to reduce time spent on data entry. It can also sync contacts and emails from Gmail.

Copper supports the creation of custom fields, allowing you to record additional information on contacts.

You can use the software to organize contacts into lists, view a live activity feed of all interactions with a contact, and set up real-time alerts and notifications for when contacts need your attention.

It also allows you to track deals using the visual sales pipeline feature and move them between stages using drag-and-drop functionality.

You can use it to automate your sales workflow by setting up time-based tasks to be assigned to team members automatically. Copper can also recommend the next steps for each contact based on tasks, scheduled meetings, or overdue email responses.

The tool offers plenty of built-in reports you can use to review your sales performance, as well as the option to create custom reports. You can even schedule reports to be sent to stakeholders.

Copper also includes a project management feature with Kanban-style project boards, a standout feature considering it’s designed to primarily be a CRM tool.

Pipedrive is a CRM tool that gives you a simplified way to track contacts and deals, as well as visualize your sales pipeline with a drag-and-drop sales board. It supports two-way email sync and links conversations to contacts and deals automatically.

The tool makes it easy to migrate from other CRM solutions by allowing you to upload leads and deals in bulk. It can pull data on contacts using sources such as Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Pipedrive offers sales workflow automation features that allow you to automate every step of your sales process using triggers and automatic actions.

The Sales assistant feature provides tips and recommendations on features and integrations you should use to help you take full advantage of the software’s capabilities.

You can use Pipedrive to generate detailed reports that allow you to visualize sales performance and share them with anyone using dedicated public URLs. There’s also the option to create custom dashboards to track team performance and uncover bottlenecks.

Other notable features include setting and assigning goals to track progress, creating sales forecasts using expected deal close dates, and invoice creation .

Pipedrive also offers an add-on called LeadBooster, which allows you to:

• Discover leads based on criteria such as industry, location, and job title
• Set up a chatbot to qualify leads
• Implement a live chat feature for reps to pick up conversations started through the chatbot
• Create custom forms you can embed on your website to collect leads’ contact information

Businesses can use Nimble to manage all their customers and prospects from a central location, as well as create segmented contact lists.

Nimble can help you learn more about your prospects by enriching contacts with data from the web, allowing you to sell to them more effectively. It also gives you an activity tracking dashboard so that you can stay on top of your team’s tasks, calls, and activities.

You can use the software to launch personalized follow-up email campaigns to engage prospects and take advantage of the email tracking feature to know when prospects interact with your emails.

Nimble integrates with more than 100 popular apps, including Zapier, FreshBooks, PandaDoc, and Zendesk.

Email outreach tools

Email outreach tools help you automate the process of reaching out to a large number of prospects via email. It usually includes features such as email personalization, custom send schedules, and email tracking and reporting.

Hunter Campaigns

Hunter Campaigns allows you to use your Gmail or Outlook account to send cold email campaigns for free.

You can schedule emails to be sent during specific days of the week or times of the day, as well as personalize emails using custom attributes to achieve better open and reply rates.

With Hunter Campaigns, you can create outreach campaigns consisting of a single email or a sequence of multiple emails. Its email tracking feature allows you to track email sends, opens, and replies.

Hunter Campaigns also offers hundreds of cold email templates you can use to jumpstart your campaigns.

Cold calling tools

Cold calling tools help you make cold calls more efficiently. They often include an automated dialing feature, call recording, custom caller ID, and advanced reporting features.

CloudTalk enables sales teams to reach more prospects and close more deals. It offers advanced cold calling features such as:

• Predictive Dialer – Make more calls in less time by automatically dialing the next phone number on your list.
• Smart Dialer – Compile a list of phone numbers from a website and add them to your calling queue automatically.
• Voicemail drops - Record a default voicemail message and have CloudTalk play it automatically when you reach a prospect’s voicemail.

You can record calls made with CloudTalk and use the recordings to train sales reps. The speech-to-text feature transcribes your calls automatically so you can review the transcriptions at a later time, as well as search through calls.

There’s also the option to add notes to calls and sync them to your CRM system. CloudTalk integrates with a number of popular CRM solutions, including HubSpot Sales Hub, Salesforce Sales Cloud, and Pipedrive.

The automatic outbound caller ID feature makes sure you always dial prospects from a local number, increasing the chances that they’ll answer your calls. Other notable features include customer cards, call transfers, call masking, and 3-way calling.

The software offers detailed reports that show you the total number of calls made, voicemail messages left, call duration, and more. You get reports for individual sales reps or your entire team.

The CloudTalk blog is a great resource on cold calling. So, if you want to learn more about how to set appointments for your cold calls , or how to convert cold calls into leads, definitely check it out.

Dialpad is a cloud communication platform that offers a business phone system that works on desktop and laptop computers, smartphones, and tablets.

You can use it to make unlimited cold calls, as well as record and transcribe them. Dialpad also allows you to switch between different devices during calls seamlessly.

The Real-time Assist Cards feature gives sales reps the answers they need to handle objections and move sales calls forward. The cards pop up automatically when trigger phrases or keywords are spoken.

Dialpad also supports sentiment analysis, allowing sales managers to spot sales calls that might be headed in the wrong direction and jump in to assist in winning the prospect over.

You can set up automated support scripts reps can use during calls, as well as create sales playlists consisting of successful calls to educate them on the best way to handle calls.

Dialpad integrates with popular CRM solutions such as Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot Sales Hub, allowing you to sync all your data to your CRM system seamlessly.

RingCentral

RingCentral is a well-known VoIP phone system compatible with mobile and desktop devices.

It allows you to make, record, and transcribe cold calls, which helps you devise winning sales strategies. You can also send custom and predefined voice messages to your important customers.

Its Call Flip feature lets you switch devices during an ongoing call when you’re on the go and don’t want to miss any important meetings.

You can use the Live Call Monitoring feature to listen in on calls in real-time to monitor new sales agents dealing with a client. This way, you can chime in to prevent situations that might get out of hand and provide a learning experience for new sales agents.

The Call Analytics and Reports feature helps you get real-time performance activity and analysis of the entire sales team. You can set the benchmark based on your custom KPIs, find specific opportunities, and train your sales agents accordingly.

RingCentral is also integrated with all the major CRMs, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho. So it allows you to use all your logged and tracked calls and activity history for prospecting opportunities. You can even make calls directly from CRM to your customers with just a click.

Nextiva prides itself on being a scalable and easy to set up business phone solution. It’s available on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices.

You can use Nextiva to make unlimited cold calls. It allows you to set up a custom caller ID and switch between devices seamlessly during calls. In addition, the software can provide your sales reps with real-time suggestions on how to address prospects’ concerns and objections.

It also includes features that allow you to track your sales pipeline, create custom pipeline stages, and manage tasks and deadlines.

Video sales tools

Video sales software is designed to help sales teams get better response rates, book more meetings, and speed up their sales cycle with the help of video. It can be used for prospecting, inbound lead responses, and even lead nurturing.

Vidyard allows you to record and send video messages prospects can watch when it’s most convenient for them. It can record your screen, webcam, or both.

You can record videos from your desktop, web browser, or smartphone, and edit them within Vidyard.

There’s also the option to create a custom thumbnail or animated GIF preview for every video and add a link for prospects to book a meeting with you.

Once you’ve recorded a video, you can embed it on your website or send it to your prospect via email or a LinkedIn message. Vidyard also offers a Chrome extension that allows you to record and send videos from within LinkedIn.

You can set up Vidyard to send you notifications as your videos are watched. Vidyard supports automatic video transcription, custom video-sharing pages, and video hub and playlist creation.

You also get access to a detailed analytics dashboard that shows you who’s watching your videos and which videos drive the most engagement.

BombBomb is a video sales platform designed to help sales teams prospect and nurture leads more effectively. It allows you to record a video using your webcam or record your screen.

You can share the video through email or social media, or create a branded video page. There’s also the option to add a call-to-action link to each video.

BombBomb offers unlimited video hosting, syncs to your CRM tools, and has a handy Chrome extension.

Other notable features include reusable video snippets, caption support, and virtual backgrounds.

Sales meeting tools

Sales meeting software aims to help sales teams automate the process of booking meetings with prospects. It syncs with your calendar app to prevent double booking and may even include features such as custom booking pages and lead routing.

Demodesk is a sales meeting platform that helps sales teams simplify the process of booking and running meetings.

It syncs with your calendar app to allow prospects to only book meetings during available time slots. You also get the option to set a minimum buffer time between meetings so that you can rest or prepare for the next call.

Demodesk allows you to set up automated email reminders to reduce no-shows. It supports custom booking pages, pre-booking questions, lead routing, and round-robin team scheduling.

There’s also a Virtual Sales Floor feature that allows you to review live and upcoming meetings, as well as shadow calls and coach sales reps in real-time.

Additionally, you can create sales playbooks consisting of slides, web apps, battle cards, and talk tracks. Demodesk offers playbook templates you can use, but you also get the option to create your own from scratch.

With Demodesk, you can sync everything to your CRM system seamlessly, including notes, call recordings, and event activity.

Supercharge your business development

Ready to take your business development to the next level? Take another look at our list and pick a few tools to try out. Most of the tools offer a free trial period, so you can see if a particular tool is the right fit for you at no cost.

Content Manager at Hunter. Passionate about books, marketing, and technology.

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Project management tools and techniques to use in 2024

Project management is a dynamic discipline, you need a strategic set of skills, knowledge, tools, and techniques to meet project requirements. It involves careful planning, initiation, organization, and execution to achieve your project goals.

Understanding the techniques of project management is crucial for anyone navigating the project. Several surveys have already found that using the right project management tools and techniques increases your overall performance and productivity, not to mention, happiness levels at work.

In this article, we will understand the popular and helpful project management techniques that will help you in completing your project successfully.

Further, we would elaborate on how as a manager you can put these techniques to use with the right tools that can fit your exact needs.

So without further ado, let’s move on to find all the project management techniques that can work for your team and ease your work processes.

Popular project management tools and techniques

Project management techniques play a significant role in defining the structure, work allocation, utilization of resources , and at times, deciding the fate of a project as well.

There are several project management techniques and tools that a project manager and their team can abide by.

Today, we have assembled the best of the best for you, so you can understand what these are all about and how exactly you can go ahead to implement them.

We have categorized all these techniques into various categories, the first of which is:

Traditional project management techniques

Classic techniques of project management include the more traditional methods of project management where a sequential and upfront approach is adopted to execute project management strategies . You plan, prioritize, and execute—as simple as that.

Traditional project management techniques are established methods and practices that are used to plan, execute, and monitor projects. These techniques follow a linear or sequential approach, with defined phases such as initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure.

While traditional project management techniques are effective for most projects, they may lack flexibility and adaptability compared to the modern approaches.

Here are some of the most commonly used classical methods of project management:

1. Critical Chain Methodology

What is critical chain methodology.

The idea of Critical Chain Methodology was introduced in 1997 in Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s book, Critical Chain, where he described the methodology as a technique of planning and managing projects that strive to keep resources leveled. It is different from other methodologies in a way that it focuses on resources rather than on the method itself and makes sure that the project plan is feasible enough and completed on time.

How does it work?

The main aim of the Critical Chain Method (CCM) is to eliminate project schedule delays brought on by uncertainty, overestimating work length, and idling internal buffers.

This project management technique goes into effect after the original project schedule is created, which involves creating task dependencies .

Based on the Critical Chain Method, the developed critical path is revised. The technique makes this assumption based on constraints specific to each activity. 

2. Waterfall

What is the waterfall methodology.

This is one of the simplest and oldest project management techniques known to manage projects . It is also referred to as the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) focuses on making a solid plan and effective execution.

The Waterfall methodology is sequential, which means one task has to be completed before the next starts in the pipeline.

Here, all the requirements must be defined in the beginning so that there is proper planning and organization of a project plan .

How does Waterfall methodology work?

The Waterfall methodology employs a sequential process that is based on predetermined deadlines, specifications, and results.

With this approach, the individual execution teams are not required to be in continual contact and are typically self-contained, until particular integrations are necessary.

In contrast to the Agile model, team members tend to work individually and aren’t required to deliver progress updates as frequently. Typically, one phase doesn’t start until the last one has ended.

3. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) 

Every project is made up of various small and big tasks that can overwhelm both project managers and team members at first glance.

This is why planning is essential and more essential than that, is project breakdown before the execution process starts.

This project management technique makes bigger, more complex tasks organized by breaking them into smaller, more manageable chunks. 

How does the Work Breakdown Structure work?

WBS is a key project deliverable that defines a detailed cost or time estimate to help managers have a clear understanding that their estimate will exceed the intended budget or deadlines.

The WBS’s main objective is to plan the project’s timetable. The length of each work is planned according to its necessary predecessors and subsequent tasks.

The WBS then offers a comprehensive plan so the project manager may understand how the project should develop and effectively manage the workflow .

4. Critical Path Method (CPM)

What is the critical path method.

It is another one of the most important project management techniques and tools. The Critical Path Method of managing projects and visualizing the project plan includes mapping out all the sequential steps that are going to help you achieve the result.

While figuring out the smartest way to the ultimate goal, you will realize that there might be more than one pathway leading to the resulting goal. While pursuing this method of project management, though, we always choose the shortest path.

Therefore, in the Critical path method, you take up the plan that has the least amount of milestones and also takes the least amount of time for project completion. It is an extension of PERT where the emphasis is placed on strategic scheduling and smart decision-making.

How does the Critical Path Method work?

The critical path method (CPM) is a method used for determining schedule flexibility and identifying tasks required for project completion. It looks after the longest series of tasks that must be completed on schedule for the project to be concluded.

This project management strategy ensures that no important activities are delayed, making sure that the rest of the project is on time . It is one of the best project management tools and techniques.

Finding the most crucial activities in the project timetable, determining task dependencies, and computing task durations are the core tenets of CPM.

Agile project management techniques

5. scrum methodology, what is scrum methodology.

The Scrum framework is a part of the Agile methodology. Scrum helps teams focus on real priorities and the immediate requirements of the clients. This technique helps you leverage effective communication , teamwork, and speed of development in a project. 

How does Scrum methodology work?

In Scrum methodology, a team is often led by a scrum master that is also called a Subject Matter Expert (SME), who is responsible for inculcating the values of the Agile methodology within the team.

This way the team can make way for seamless collaboration and a goal-oriented mindset where the team members are easily able to deliver results accurately and quickly at the same time.

What is Agile methodology?

Agile methodology is one of the most popular tools and techniques for project management. It uses the ‘sprint approach’ where you can break a project in the form of sprints or cycles.

As the word ‘agile’ means the ability to move quickly and respond swiftly to changes, likewise, this methodology makes way for flexibility and collaboration.

It is extensively used in software development and is best suited for small software projects that require frequent communication and the need to collaborate together to work on innovative projects.

How does Agile Methodology work?

It is a method of project management that entails ongoing communication and iterative development. Agile project management is based on the idea that a project may be improved upon continually throughout its life cycle with changes being made swiftly and appropriately.

Agile project management is among the most widely used methods because of its adaptability, flexibility, and emphasis on client feedback. Agile project management is a word that can be used to refer to a variety of frameworks rather than a specific methodology.

7. Kanban Methodology

What is Kanban Methodology?

Kanban methodology is a visual way of controlling the flow of work through a process. Kanban shows both the workflow (the process) and the actual work going through it.

Kanban aims to locate possible bottlenecks in your process and eliminate them, allowing work to move through it efficiently and cost-effectively at a high throughput.

The first Kanban system was introduced by Industrial engineer and businessman Taiichi Ohno for Toyota automobiles in Japan.

It was developed as a straightforward planning system to efficiently control and manage work and inventory at every step of production. It is one of the best project monitoring tools and techniques.

How does Kanban methodology work?

The main focus of this method is to ensure continual delivery without overburdening a team. In this method, Work items are visually represented on a kanban board so that team members can always monitor the status of the project.

It is intended to improve team collaboration. It enables you to break down your duties into stages and gain a bird’s eye view of your overall development.

You can visualize both the process and the specific activities involved in the process using this project management technique. The basic goal of Kanban is to manage work efficiently and track the pace of the project efficiently.

Hence, it is one of the most important project management tools and techniques .

8. Adaptive Project Framework (APF)

What is an adaptive project framework.

Adaptive project framework (APF) or adaptive project management (APM) is a cross between Agile project management as well as change management. It allows the team to set fallback systems and fail-safes so that the project keeps running smoothly with one successful iteration after the other. 

How does the Adaptive Project Framework work?

Just like the Agile methodology and everything that the Scrum framework entails, the Adaptive Project Framework works around the theory that improvements must be made as soon as a setback is discovered . This project management technique and tool helps to implement changes faster than possible and to bring change to the game plan the moment a roadblock is identified.

9. Extreme Programming

What is extreme programming.

Extreme programming is an approach to project management where every principle of Agile is put into motion, every practice of the Scrum framework is practiced, and beyond that, every great coding practice is followed as well. 

In this project management process, the emphasis is made on the user requirements and the coding and deployment aspect of the project as a whole. If you follow this approach you will get to deliver on the various software requirements of the clients and the stakeholders at the end of every week. These are known as “small releases”, which will, in turn, help you gather and work on feedback much more swiftly.

Change management project planning techniques:

10. extreme project management (xpm), what is extreme project management.

No, extreme project management is not named after extreme sports like motocross or the various snowboarding competitions. These types of project management tools and techniques are used in highly complex projects where uncertainty is high. It takes a more casual and optimistic approach to planning a project and emphasizes less formality in the company’s culture. The extreme title is owed to an opportunity for flexible planning and unorthodox tactics.

XPM is designed to assist you in managing the variables that alter and emerge as a project moves forward. It focuses on delivering the desired outcome, rather than just the outcome that was initially expected. In this project management technique, people have the freedom to change the strategy if they decide midway through a project that the first outcome isn’t ideal.

Also read – Best Google sheets project management templates

11. Event Chain Methodology

What is event chain methodology.

While following the Event Chain Methodology, the team works to identify events, milestones, tasks, and more. Furthermore, the team works on determining as well as defining the relationship between said tasks. This helps simplify everything. It is like setting a risk management plan that has been set into place by the project manager. 

It helps ensure that every aspect of the project, every deadline, and schedule is well taken care of. It is a technique that is mostly used for network analysis and risk mitigation.

Other highly robust project management techniques:

12. prince2, what is prince2.

PRINCE2 is an acronym for Projects In Controlled Environments. It is a project management methodology that is made up of principles and processes. Originating in the UK, Prince2 is an articulately stated methodology in which a project is divided into multiple levels and stages, each having its own set of steps to be followed. 

This standard enables the plan to be implemented in any organization irrespective of its nature, enabling them to take the appropriate action for the successful completion of projects.

13. Process-Based Project Management 

What is process-based project management.

Process-based project management is a systematic and strategic strategy that recognizes the project’s goal and aligns it with the mission, vision, and core values of the company. This methodology emphasizes better collaboration between various departments within the company to achieve common goals. 

Process-based project management helps project managers view all the activities within an organization as a collection of standardized processes, which are managed to achieve the desired result.

14. PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique)

What is pert.

PERT is a project management technique that helps with calculating the estimated time it will take to complete a project. Both scheduling and budgeting are essential components of any project. 

PERT charts are tools used to schedule tasks in a project, which makes it easier for team members to coordinate to accomplish the work. With PERT, you get three different time estimates for the project: the most optimistic time estimate, the most probable time estimate, and the most pessimistic time estimate.

15. PMBOK Method

What is pmbok method.

The PMBOK, or Project Management Body of Knowledge, published by the Project Management Institute is not truly a methodology. The PMBOK “methodology” is a framework of established project management industry standards for standards, conventions, processes, best practices, terminologies, and recommendations.

PMBOK is more of an industry framework than a project management methodology. Systems, techniques, procedures, and regulations make up methodologies, whereas the PMBOK is a reference manual on how to finish a project to the highest standard.

It is a collection of rules, recommendations, procedures, and project management tools. The Project Management Institute created this widely accepted standard to lay out the foundations of project management.

Project management approaches examples include the waterfall methodology, critical path method, Lean, Kanban, and Six Sigma . They are also compatible with more recent methodologies like agile and scrum.

16. Rational Unified Process

What is the rational unified process.

Rational Unified Process (RUP) is an agile software development method, in which the life cycle of a project, or the development of software, is divided into four phases.

These phases include modeling, analysis and design, implementation, testing, and application, among other activities.

These types of project management technologies and tools are agile and iterative, which means they are repeated. Iterative because the entire project repeats the process’ fundamental steps.

In this method, the life cycle of the program is subdivided into different cycles. Each cycle represents, for instance, the time when a new iteration of a product is being developed. The four subsequent phases of development are separated by the Rational Unified Process (RUP) as follows:

• Initial stage
• Developing stage
• phase of construction
• Transitional period

Each phase ends with a milestone. A milestone is a point where important decisions are made. To be able to make those decisions, there are a few objectives that need to be accomplished first.

How to implement the project management techniques

Every Batman needs a Robin, every hero needs a sidekick, and yes, every manager needs reliable project management software . Well, we have one that will help you implement any and every project management technique in this list to some if not full effect.

The tool in question here is ProofHub.

ProofHub is a versatile project management tool used by leading organizations like NASA, Disney, Taco Bell, and many more. This all-in-one tool comes jam-packed with powerful features to eliminate the need to have too many different tools to run one business.

The best part about using a tool like ProofHub to simplify your work processes is that you will experience the convenience of visualizing and managing everything under one roof. 

Consolidated data helps to keep you ahead of schedule and manage time better. It provides connectivity through team discussions and chats and transparency through uploading files and putting up as much information as you can regarding the tasks.

Interestingly enough, ProofHub helps declutter everything from tasks and subtasks to discussions and notes in more than one way. 

From Gantt charts to Kanban boards and those confusing emails to a neat and clean calendar view, ProofHub comes through with providing you a clear view of tasks, deadlines, and goals simultaneously in many ways.

Here are some exceptional features of ProofHub:

• Tasks : Quickly add tasks, create sub-tasks, and label them with tags and colorful tabs. View sorted tasks in their respective task lists with the whole view of the project.
• Custom roles : Makes task management less stressful for teams by making it easy to set custom roles for the team members and assigning them to tasks and projects.
• Proofing and review : Online proofing software saves a lot of time during the feedback-sharing process .
• Gantt charts : Get a visual picture of projects with Gantt charts. Define dependencies and map out the project timeline with ease.
• Accessibility : ProofHub is available as a mobile app as well, both for Android and iOS users.
• Flexibility : Help your team view their tasks corresponding to their deadlines in Kanban or calendar views.

ProofHub is an amazing project management and online collaboration tool because it helps you create, review, deliver, plan, and organize like no other tool. With its comprehensive bells and whistles, it comes forward as a very adaptable tool for project management.

Not only does it help with project management, but it also comes with numerous features that help the team stay connected. Exclusive communication features such as the following give ProofHub a definite edge over other project management tools:

• Chat : A feature that makes ProofHub completely singular is that it facilitates quick back-and-forth communication on the same platform where you manage the things you communicate about. 
• Discussions : Even though the tool comes with the facility of chat and group chats alike, sometimes a team needs to have a formal discussion. The feature of “discussions” is all about sharing ideas and putting opinions forward. And, every team member can easily participate in the same!
• Comments : Gone are the days of texting, calling, or pinging someone to check updates or inform people that you have reviewed their work. With comments, you can post your reviews on the task card itself, and a notification will be instantly received by the concerned.
• Proofing : ProofHub has a more distinct outlook and caters to the workplace in a way that no other tool can. In that, it helps in the most sincere form of communication, i.e., reviewing. With markup tools for annotation , it is a powerful proofing tool that helps with all types of files.

As industries and technology keep evolving, so does the importance of effective project management. Adopting innovative project management tools and techniques ensures you stay ahead in a competitive landscape. Although. It can be overwhelming to choose the right project management tools and techniques for your project and business with so many options in the market. We hope this list of techniques and our expertise in project management tools will help you make a great decision that works out for your team as well as your business.

Why do you need project management tools and techniques?

Project management tools and techniques help in defining the entire work process which also explains how the project will shape and aid in the elimination of project bottlenecks.

Should you use project management software for these techniques?

A project management software helps you ensure that your PM techniques are moving in the right direction. It helps you execute plans, communicate, track budget, resources, and time.

When to use project management techniques?

PM techniques can be used to monitor task completion, work evaluation, and meeting deadlines. These methods are also used for an effective visual representation of projects.

What are project management tools and techniques?

The technology and methods used to manage projects, tasks, teams, and other aspects of work seamlessly are known as project management techniques and tools.

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