In his 1985 book Competitive Advantage, Porter explains that a value chain is a collection of processes that a company performs to create value for its consumers. As a result, he asserts that value chain analysis is directly linked to competitive advantage. Porter’s Value Chain Model is a strategic management tool developed by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter. The tool analyses a company’s value chain – defined as the combination of processes that the company uses to make money.
Porter’s Value Chain model is a strategic management tool developed by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter.
The tool analyses a company’s value chain – defined as the combination of processes that the company uses to make money.
In his 1985 book Competitive Advantage, Porter explains that a value chain is a collection of processes that a company performs to create value for its consumers. As a result, he asserts that value chain analysis is directly linked to competitive advantage.
Competitive advantage occurs when a business systematically examines its internal processes and how they interact with each other.
Each process in the value chain should create value that exceeds the cost of creating that value. In other words, it should be profitable.
The strength of Porter’s model lies in its focus on customers through value chain systems. This is in contrast to other value chain models that focus on departmental and accounting expenses, for example.
Value Chain vs. Supply Chain
A value chain comprises the activities a company performs to create value for customers and maximize its competitive advantage.
A supply chain, on the other hand, describes the network of entities that source raw materials, transform them into products, and distribute or sell them to customers.
Understanding value chains
Value chains encompass the input activities a company performs to create value for customers.
Essentially, these companies take inputs and transform them into outputs that are then presented to the end user.
Since each is in the business of making money, the output must be more valuable than the process of creating it.
Manufacturing companies create value by turning raw materials into products that the population can use and benefit from.
Retailers create value by taking the product and packaging it in a way that is convenient for customers.
This may be physical packaging or, in the case of an insurance company, the way the product is presented or where it is sold.
Insurance companies offer insurance to individuals at an affordable price, but to do so, they must secure their own insurance with a larger provider that is better equipped to underwrite the policy.
If a private citizen was required to take out one of these re-insurance policies themselves, the cost would be prohibitively high.
By facilitating a much cheaper policy, the insurance company adds value to the chain and makes money in the process.
Understanding supply chains
Supply chains, instead, illustrate the connection between various companies, activities, and functions involved in transforming raw materials into a product that is marketed and sold to the customer.
This “journey” usually involves suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers – though the order may be different in some contexts while others will omit certain entities completely.
Supply chains are controlled by a cross-functional system known as supply chain management, which may include product development, integration, information sharing, procurement, distribution, customer service, and performance analysis.
While the idea of value chains arose from business management, supply chains have their roots in operational management since they are more concerned with product conveyance.
In other words, they exist to ensure that raw materials are turned into end products that can actually reach the customer.
Supply chains and value chains
Despite the differences between each idea, both are integral parts of efficient global logistics.
Supply chains operate 24/7 and ensure that cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo can be incorporated into the battery of a smartphone sold in San Francisco.
Value chains motivate or incentivize the various supply chain entities to provide value at different stages as raw materials are turned into useable products.
over value adding and work to ensure customers can conveniently access products.
The primary activities of Porter’s Value Chain model
Porter breaks down his value chain model into five primary processes or activities.
1. Inbound logistics
This includes the warehousing and associated inventory control of raw materials. This also includes the nature of the relationship with suppliers.
2. Operations
Operations encompass any process that turns raw materials into a finished product ready for sale, including labeling, branding, and packaging.
3. Outbound logistics
Outbound logistics concern any process where the product is distributed to a customer. This includes the storage and distribution of products and the processes involved in fulfilling customer orders.
4. Marketing and sales
Any processes that attempt to enhance product visibility among a target audience are included in marketing and sales. This activity is also heavily reliant on customer relationships.
5. Services
Services include any processes that occur after a purchase has been made, including customer service, repairs, refunds, and warranty acknowledgment.
Secondary activities
Within Porter’s Value Chain model four secondary activities support the foundational primary activities common to most businesses.
Here is a brief look at each.
1. Company infrastructure
Company infrastructure entails any process that supports daily business operations. Administration, clerical, financial, and line management are all value-creating infrastructure processes.
2. Human resource management
Human resource management (HRM) covers any process related to the training, acquisition, or termination of employees. HRM departments and their ability to hire talented and motivated staff are crucial to a company’s competitive advantage.
3. Research and development
Technology can create a competitive advantage in Porter’s value chain because it can streamline important processes. These include payroll automation software, customer service procedures, and distribution networks.
4. Procurement
Procurement is simply the acquisition of necessary goods or services. The most typical example is the procurement of raw materials and the negotiation of pricing and product purchase contracts. It may also include the purchase of equipment, offices, buildings, and machinery.
Starbucks and Porter’s value chain model
To better understand the value chain concept, let’s take a look at the various value chain and secondary process activities using Starbucks as an example.
Value chain activities
Inbound logistics
The Starbucks value chain begins with buyers purchasing high-quality coffee beans from primary producers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The beans are roasted and packaged – which adds value to their sale price – and sent to a mixture of Starbucks-owned and third-party distribution centers.
Note that the procurement process is never outsourced to ensure quality standards are enforced from the start of the chain.
Operations
Starbucks operates more than 32,000 stores in 80 different countries. Stores are either company-owned or licensed to other companies who have access to desirable retail spaces such those inside airports.
Starbucks also owns a range of related brands such as La Boulange, Teavana, Ethos Water, and Seattle Coffee Co.
Outbound logistics
Starbucks does not tend to employ a B2B model where other brands distribute its products, but a small selection of coffee products can be found in supermarkets.
Most products are transported from warehouses and distribution centers and then sold in Starbucks stores and cafés around the world.
Marketing and sales
Starbucks is one of the world’s most recognizable brands, and for good reason. The company is able to promote its brand with consistent messaging across social media, video, television, events, and various in-store experiences such as new product sampling.
Service
The company aims to build brand loyalty through a superior in-store experience. After witnessing the café culture in Italy, CEO Howard Schultz wanted to bring a similar experience to American coffee lovers.
In a later interview, he wanted Starbucks to serve “as a third place between home and work, an extension between people’s lives, at a time when people have no place to go.” In addition to home-based comforts, Starbucks invests heavily in customer service training to add value to the chain.
Secondary process activities
Let’s now take a look at the secondary process activities.
Company infrastructure
This encompasses various departments that are necessary to maintain company operations, such as finance and legal.
Starbucks also employs business managers in corporate offices and store managers in each café to oversee the baristas.
Human resource management
Starbucks is well known for its effective human resource management. Employees are offered a range of perks, including health coverage, paid leave, retirement plans, subsidized university education, company stock plans, and discounts on work-related transportation expenses.
These initiatives result in a motivated, efficient, and engaged workforce which increases employee retention.
Research and development
Each Starbucks store provides unlimited bandwidth free of charge which creates significant value for casual diners and businessmen alike. The company also uses technology to ensure the taste of its coffee is consistent across its stores.
The Starbucks Rewards program app is another example of the café chain using technology to its advantage. Customers can download an app, use it to pay for their coffee, and collect stars that can be redeemed for food, drinks, and more. Customers must preload the app with money or redeem a gift card to make a purchase.
Procurement
As we noted earlier, procurement for Starbucks means sourcing coffee beans directly from primary producers on several continents. Purchasing agents that are employed by the company form strategic partnerships with each producer and communicate the standards they must meet in terms of bean quality.
Amazon Value Chain modelExample
Now will repeat the value chain analysis, this time for eCommerce behemoth Amazon.
Value chain activities
Inbound logistics
In general terms, Amazon does not source raw materials from suppliers because it does not manufacture its own products. As a primarily online retail business, the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service allows sellers to have their items picked, packed and shipped by the company in one of its many fulfillment centers around the world.
Value is added via immense economies of scale and additional perks such as free shipping and access to buyer traffic. The company also takes care of customer service and product returns as part of the FBA service.
Operations
Amazon’s operations are divided into three core segments:
North America – which includes websites in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
International – which includes country-specific websites in a further 13 locations such as Australia, China, France, Germany, and Spain.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) – incorporating sales of cloud infrastructure services, storage and database items, plus other services for enterprises, governments, and academic institutions.
Outbound logistics
Amazon utilizes approximately 185 fulfillment centers around the world as part of its FBA service. Product fulfillment is supported by robotic inventory technology and then delivered via aircraft, ships, trucks, drones, and local couriers.
Outbound logistics also encompasses the delivery of downloadable products and physical store sales such as those from the Whole Foods Market chain.
Marketing and sales
Amazon spends billions of dollars on marketing each year across online and offline channels. The company promotes its vast selection of products and services, rapid delivery, superior customer service, and membership programs such as Amazon Prime.
Services
Amazon offers customers unprecedented levels of customer service for buyers in terms of shipping, refunds, returns, and exchanges. It also works with vendors to ensure warranties and other promises are honored when applicable.
Vendors are also offered a suite of business tools that increase their odds of success. This includes training and documentation on advertising products, setting competitive prices, and earning exemplary customer reviews.
Secondary process activities
Company infrastructure
A company of Amazon’s size would not be viable for long without the necessary infrastructure in place. The company has an extremely consistent, reliable, and scalable logistics system. What’s more, it has managed to turn some parts of its infrastructure into businesses in its own right. One example is the cloud-based Amazon Web services.
Human resource management
Amazon utilizes a mixture of employees, contractors, and seasonal or temporary labor to cope with periods of increased consumer demand. Employee performance is assessed with a lean, data-driven, Six Sigma-Esque approach instituted by CEO Jeff Bezos.
In the United States, Amazon’s minimum wage of $18 per hour is twice the federally mandated rate. The company also offers benefits that extend to an employee’s immediate family, such as paid parental leave, retirement plans, and healthcare coverage.
Research and development
Amazon has utilized technology to its advantage, whether that be drone deliveries and robotic warehouses or via acquisitions of virtual and augmented reality companies such as Oculus.
In 2020, the company’s SEC filing noted it was granted 2,244 patents. The majority of these were in machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision.
Procurement
Amazon procurement is formally known as Sales and Operations (S&OP). The company forecasts individual product sales and monitors real-time inventory levels based on receipts and shipments from fulfillment centers.
Procurement also includes the necessary equipment, resources, technology, and infrastructure required for its core eCommerce platform. Also included here is vendor and supplier procurement, which encompasses information systems, supply chain partner eligibility rules, and performance evaluation.
Apple Value Chain Model Example
In the third example, let’s discuss Apple’s value chain.
The company has a lot of leverage when dealing with suppliers because of its financial clout. It sets stringent quality standards and finds innovative ways to decrease its storage costs.
Operations
Operations are divided into five market segments: America, Europe, Greater China, Japan, and Rest of Asia Pacific. Manufacturing is concentrated in Asia where labor is more affordable.
Outbound logistics
Assembled Apple products are sent to intermediate warehouse facilities where they are then made available to online stores, retail stores, sales teams, wholesalers, retailers, and cell network carriers.
Marketing and sales
While most Apple products tend to sell themselves, the company nevertheless spends millions on marketing its brand. It promotes its technological products with simple sales copy and has promoted a brand that is cool, fun, and friendly.
Apple tends to avoid traditional forms of advertising such as PPC, instead of relying on positive reviews from news media and celebrity product endorsements.
Services
Apple maintains strong customer service across the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase periods. Service staff in Apple stores embody the brand and are polite, helpful, and knowledgeable about the product range.
The vast majority of Apple software and hardware products include 90 days of free support.
Secondary process activities
Now for Apple’s secondary process activities.
Company infrastructure
The company is supported by a hierarchical organizational structure with product-based divisions and some degree of inter-divisional collaboration.
Apple has become less hierarchical and more collaborative over the years in a shift that was precipitated by CEO Tim Cook.
Human resource management
Apple’s human resource management focuses on maximizing the returns (and minimizing the risks) of human capital. HR is responsible for leadership development, incentive compensation, employee development, employee relations, and recruitment and selection.
Apple has a rigorous recruitment process that consists of initial screening sessions, up to five FaceTime interviews, assessment center exercises, and onsite interviews that may last for up to six hours. This competitive process ensures the company hires the best talent.
Many company innovations have changed the world, including the Mac, iPhone, iPod, and Apple Watch. Apple is also invested in the self-driving car, sustainable energy, and healthcare industries.
Procurement
Apple has a robust supplier ecosystem that helps the company obtain high-quality products and services. Importantly, these products and services are delivered promptly and at a price that represents the best possible value to customers and shareholders.
Procurement is underpinned by fair and equal treatment of suppliers. There is also a core focus on supplier diversity, which means Apple does business with companies that are owned by women, LGBTQ+ individuals, minorities, and those with a disability.
Tesla Value Chain Model Example
Here is another example of Porter’s value chain. This time, we’ll analyze the chain in terms of electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla.
Primary activities
Inbound logistics
To overcome the obstacles associated with sourcing batteries for its vehicle fleet, Tesla partnered with Panasonic to build the Gigafactory. This also reduced the cost of battery production. Tesla then entered into deals with Daimler and Toyota to learn more about the vehicle manufacturing process and fund their powertrain and battery technology.
Tesla stores its various raw materials and tech in multiple warehouses around the world and a principal factory in Fremont, California.
Operations
Unlike other vehicle manufacturers, Tesla vertically integrates aspects of production, packing, assembly, design, and recharging systems. With both the engineering and design teams based in Fremont, value is created from more efficient production and logistics systems.
Outbound logistics
For consumers who live within a certain radius, Tesla vehicles are delivered directly to their homes. Others are delivered to dealerships or in some cases, third-party carriers.
Marketing and sales
Complementary to Tesla’s unique direct delivery model is a multi-faceted model for vehicle sales comprising online stores and Apple-esque retail outlets. The latter are typically found in large cities where brand exposure can be maximized.
The company also relies on the public persona of Elon Musk for much of its marketing returns. Musk’s Twitter account is never far from the headlines and his decision to purchase the social media platform may also bode well for Tesla.
Services
Tesla provides after-sales services via its dealerships and service centers. Services are also provided by a fleet of vehicles that allows the company to scale its service capability with very little capital investment.
Secondary activities
Procurement
For now, Tesla is heavily reliant on its direct suppliers of battery metals such as lithium, cobalt, and copper. The value created from inbound logistics allows Tesla to procure materials at a competitive price.
To future drive down costs, Musk has mentioned on more than one occasion that Tesla owning and operating a lithium mine is a future possibility.
Human resource management
To some extent, Tesla relies on the value created by its enigmatic leader who is unlikely to ever leave the company or sell his vision to someone else.
However, more value is created by Tesla’s large cohort of engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, tech, installation, and service personnel.
Infrastructure
Tesla operates two infrastructure segments:
Automotive – including the design, manufacture, sale, and leasing of EVs.
Energy Generation – which includes similar functions for solar energy systems, energy storage products, and related services and incentives.
Technological development
It goes without saying that Tesla creates massive value through technological development. The company owns proprietary powertrain systems and is a leader in lithium-ion batteries, radar sensors, autopilot control systems, and renewable energy.
Tesla also shares car telemetry data with communications companies in the event a driver experiences a flat battery and requires assistance.
For every vehicle that is sold, Tesla spends more than any other manufacturer on research and development. In 2020 this equated to $2984 per car compared to just $1186 at Ford and $878 at General Motors.
Yet, Porter’s frameworks have been developed in a timeframe where the market context was slightly different from today’s environment.
While those frameworks have been very useful in assessing the competitive landscape up to the late 1990s.
There has been an important shift in paradigm in the current business landscape.
As the Internet took over, it enabled companies to go more directly to consumers.
This opened up the way to the demand generation era.
An era where digital-first companies, reinvigorated by the wreck off of barriers to entry, are now following a different business playbook.
In other words, until the 1990s, the supply side played a much more important role. Those have been working as a big incentive for new entrants.
In short, if you want to start a new company in an existing vertical, you got to understand all the supply dynamics first.
However, at this stage, we live in an era of demand generation. If new entrants can figure out how to build demand, they will be able to enter also more complex markets.
Companies like Tesla or SpaceX have entered very capital-intensive markets by mastering the ability to build their business by starting from a microniche and scaling from there.
Figuring out demand first and supply later has become a rule of thumb in an era where you must ensure that people want something if you build something.
Thus, hitting the so-called product-market fit before you can scale up supply.
Marc Andreessen defined Product/market fit as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” According to Andreessen, that is a moment when a product or service has its place in the market, thus enabling traction for the company offering that product or service.
Thus, in this context, Porter’s frameworks are more useful to established organizations than startups.
Indeed, another key point to realize. Today, startups are mostly driven by software.
Even an incredible piece of hardware like an iPhone gains a competitive edge due to the software side.
If your iPhone gets better and better, that is partly due to hardware improvements. But most of it is due to software improvements (your pictures are way better because AI algorithms can improve the quality at the software level).
The same is with a Tesla. If you look at it simply from the hardware standpoint, Tesla has no competitive edge concerning other EVs, which are quickly picking up.
Instead, what makes Tesla valuable is the software side. This enables engineers to improve the car with software upgrades slightly, thus making it easier to drive, more secure, and adding more and more features (just like on your iPhone).
And also, as an established organization, you have to think about non-linear competition.
In short, today’s competitive landscape has become pretty blurred, with boundaries that are not well defined, requiring a non-linear way of thinking.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving can at times, create a big impact.
For such reason, if you’re an entrepreneur or executive today, much simpler heuristics can help you thrive in such a context.
For example, heuristics like Occam’s Razor can help you make sense of an ambiguous market context.
And that is the paradox. By implying your thinking, you make your actions way more effective in a complex environment!
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
Key takeaways:
Porter’s Value Chain model is a strategic management tool for the analysis of a company’s value chain.
Porter’s Value Chain model is customer relationship-centric and is used by businesses to systematically examine each of their many processes for profitability. It is comprised of five primary value chain activities that are further supported by four secondary process activities.
For instance, the value chain of a company like Starbucks starts from the moment it sources beans from primary producers in various countries. Value is also added to the Starbucks in-store experience and consistent brand messaging.
What are the 5 primary activities of a value chain?
Porter breaks down his value chain model into five primary processes or activities.
According to Porter, a value chain is a collection of processes that a company performs to create value for its consumers to create a competitive advantage. Porter’s value chain leverages five main processes/activities (inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing & sales, and services) to design a value chain.
Porter’s Five Forces is a model that helps organizations to gain a better understanding of their industries and competition. Published for the first time by Professor Michael Porter in his book “Competitive Strategy” in the 1980s. The model breaks down industries and markets by analyzing them through five forces
In his book, “Competitive Advantage,” in 1985, Porter conceptualized the concept of competitive advantage, by looking at two key aspects. Industry attractiveness, and the company’s strategic positioning. The latter, according to Porter, can be achieved either via cost leadership, differentiation, or focus.
Porter’s Diamond Model is a diamond-shaped framework that explains why specific industries in a nation become internationally competitive while those in other nations do not. The model was first published in Michael Porter’s 1990 book The Competitive Advantage of Nations. This framework looks at the firm strategy, structure/rivalry, factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries.
Developed by American academic Michael Porter, the Four Corners Analysis helps a business understand its particular competitive landscape. The analysis is a form of competitive intelligence where a business determines its future strategy by assessing its competitors’ strategy, looking at four elements: drivers, current strategy, management assumptions, and capabilities.
A failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a structured approach to identifying design failures in a product or process. Developed in the 1950s, the failure mode and effects analysis is one the earliest methodologies of its kind. It enables organizations to anticipate a range of potential failures during the design stage.
Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA) is certification in the form of guidance and training for business analysts seeking to work in agile environments. To support this shift, AgileBA also helps the business analyst relate Agile projects to a wider organizational mission or strategy. To ensure that analysts have the necessary skills and expertise, AgileBA certification was developed.
Business valuations involve a formal analysis of the key operational aspects of a business. A business valuation is an analysis used to determine the economic value of a business or company unit. It’s important to note that valuations are one part science and one part art. Analysts use professional judgment to consider the financial performance of a business with respect to local, national, or global economic conditions. They will also consider the total value of assets and liabilities, in addition to patented or proprietary technology.
A paired comparison analysis is used to rate or rank options where evaluation criteria are subjective by nature. The analysis is particularly useful when there is a lack of clear priorities or objective data to base decisions on. A paired comparison analysis evaluates a range of options by comparing them against each other.
The Monte Carlo analysis is a quantitative risk management technique. The Monte Carlo analysis was developed by nuclear scientist Stanislaw Ulam in 1940 as work progressed on the atom bomb. The analysis first considers the impact of certain risks on project management such as time or budgetary constraints. Then, a computerized mathematical output gives businesses a range of possible outcomes and their probability of occurrence.
A cost-benefit analysis is a process a business can use to analyze decisions according to the costs associated with making that decision. For a cost analysis to be effective it’s important to articulate the project in the simplest terms possible, identify the costs, determine the benefits of project implementation, assess the alternatives.
The CATWOE analysis is a problem-solving strategy that asks businesses to look at an issue from six different perspectives. The CATWOE analysis is an in-depth and holistic approach to problem-solving because it enables businesses to consider all perspectives. This often forces management out of habitual ways of thinking that would otherwise hinder growth and profitability. Most importantly, the CATWOE analysis allows businesses to combine multiple perspectives into a single, unifying solution.
It’s possible to identify the key players that overlap with a company’s business model with a competitor analysis. This overlapping can be analyzed in terms of key customers, technologies, distribution, and financial models. When all those elements are analyzed, it is possible to map all the facets of competition for a tech business model to understand better where a business stands in the marketplace and its possible future developments.
The Pareto Analysis is a statistical analysis used in business decision making that identifies a certain number of input factors that have the greatest impact on income. It is based on the similarly named Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect of something can be attributed to just 20% of the drivers.
A comparable company analysis is a process that enables the identification of similar organizations to be used as a comparison to understand the business and financial performance of the target company. To find comparables you can look at two key profiles: the business and financial profile. From the comparable company analysis it is possible to understand the competitive landscape of the target organization.
A SWOT Analysis is a framework used for evaluating the business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It can aid in identifying the problematic areas of your business so that you can maximize your opportunities. It will also alert you to the challenges your organization might face in the future.
The PESTEL analysis is a framework that can help marketers assess whether macro-economic factors are affecting an organization. This is a critical step that helps organizations identify potential threats and weaknesses that can be used in other frameworks such as SWOT or to gain a broader and better understanding of the overall marketing environment.
Business analysis is a research discipline that helps driving change within an organization by identifying the key elements and processes that drive value. Business analysis can also be used in Identifying new business opportunities or how to take advantage of existing business opportunities to grow your business in the marketplace.
In corporate finance, the financial structure is how corporations finance their assets (usually either through debt or equity). For the sake of reverse engineering businesses, we want to look at three critical elements to determine the model used to sustain its assets: cost structure, profitability, and cash flow generation.
Financial modeling involves the analysis of accounting, finance, and business data to predict future financial performance. Financial modeling is often used in valuation, which consists of estimating the value in dollar terms of a company based on several parameters. Some of the most common financial models comprise discounted cash flows, the M&A model, and the CCA model.
Value investing is an investment philosophy that looks at companies’ fundamentals, to discover those companies whose intrinsic value is higher than what the market is currently pricing, in short value investing tries to evaluate a business by starting by its fundamentals.
The Buffet Indicator is a measure of the total value of all publicly-traded stocks in a country divided by that country’s GDP. It’s a measure and ratio to evaluate whether a market is undervalued or overvalued. It’s one of Warren Buffet’s favorite measures as a warning that financial markets might be overvalued and riskier.
Financial accounting is a subdiscipline within accounting that helps organizations provide reporting related to three critical areas of a business: its assets and liabilities (balance sheet), its revenues and expenses (income statement), and its cash flows (cash flow statement). Together those areas can be used for internal and external purposes.
Post-mortem analyses review projects from start to finish to determine process improvements and ensure that inefficiencies are not repeated in the future. In the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), this process is referred to as “lessons learned”.
Retrospective analyses are held after a project to determine what worked well and what did not. They are also conducted at the end of an iteration in Agile project management. Agile practitioners call these meetings retrospectives or retros. They are an effective way to check the pulse of a project team, reflect on the work performed to date, and reach a consensus on how to tackle the next sprint cycle.
In essence, a root cause analysis involves the identification of problem root causes to devise the most effective solutions. Note that the root cause is an underlying factor that sets the problem in motion or causes a particular situation such as non-conformance.
A break-even analysis is commonly used to determine the point at which a new product or service will become profitable. The analysis is a financial calculation that tells the business how many products it must sell to cover its production costs. A break-even analysis is a small business accounting process that tells the business what it needs to do to break even or recoup its initial investment.
Stanford University Professor Ronald A. Howard first defined decision analysis as a profession in 1964. Over the ensuing decades, Howard has supervised many doctoral theses on the subject across topics including nuclear waste disposal, investment planning, hurricane seeding, and research strategy. Decision analysis (DA) is a systematic, visual, and quantitative decision-making approach where all aspects of a decision are evaluated before making an optimal choice.
A DESTEP analysis is a framework used by businesses to understand their external environment and the issues which may impact them. The DESTEP analysis is an extension of the popular PEST analysis created by Harvard Business School professor Francis J. Aguilar. The DESTEP analysis groups external factors into six categories: demographic, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, and political.
The STEEP analysis is a tool used to map the external factors that impact an organization. STEEP stands for the five key areas on which the analysis focuses: socio-cultural, technological, economic, environmental/ecological, and political. Usually, the STEEP analysis is complementary or alternative to other methods such as SWOT or PESTEL analyses.
The STEEPLE analysis is a variation of the STEEP analysis. Where the step analysis comprises socio-cultural, technological, economic, environmental/ecological, and political factors as the base of the analysis. The STEEPLE analysis adds other two factors such as Legal and Ethical.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
