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SWOT analysis
You might come across SWOT analysis being used for identifying risks, or weaknesses and strengths in a project and in your career. It’s a technique that examines the project from that perspective of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, which is SWOT.
This technique can broaden the scope of your risk identification. The steps for SWOT is firstly to brainstorm and identify the Strengths and Weaknesses of the project, product or organization. That’s where we need that “Expert Judgment”, usually from people in and around the area that we’re working in or delivering the project to.
Once we’ve got our strengths and weaknesses, we want to identify Opportunities from those Strengths and identify any Threats from the Weaknesses. It’s a very simple two step process.
Here’s an example you’ll see where we’ve got Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and we’ve got our internal origin, what’s helpful. What’s harmful are our weaknesses and threats, while what’s helpful are our strengths and opportunities. As you know risks can come about as opportunities or positive risks, or they can come about as threats or negative risks, so it helps to identify both of those.
And that is SWOT analysis in your project.
– David McLachlan