Tools · Framework library
Framework library
The library holds 132 business strategy and technology management frameworks, and every one of them was built here rather than copied from a textbook. Each page says when to use the framework and when not to, how to run it and the mistakes people make with it, and each carries a workbench that asks its questions and exports the result as a deck, a document, a workbook or a PDF.
Where to start
Most work starts from a question rather than a framework, so the paths below start from the questions we hear most. Pick the one closest to yours.
Where should the business grow next?
- PESTLE analysisSee what is changing outside the business before choosing a direction.
- Ansoff matrixSort the growth options by how far each moves from what you know.
- TAM, SAM and SOMSize the market each option could reach.
- GE-McKinsey nine-box matrixCompare where to invest across the options or business lines.
Is this market worth entering, and how?
- Porter's Five ForcesJudge whether the industry lets anyone keep a profit.
- CAGE distance frameworkMeasure how far the new market is from the home one.
- Market entry strategyDecide whether, where, when and in what order to enter.
- Market entry modesChoose between exporting, licensing, a joint venture, an acquisition or building.
Which of these options should we choose?
- Weighted decision matrixScore the options against criteria agreed before anyone sees the scores.
- Decision tree analysisLay out what could happen after each option and compare expected values.
- Sensitivity analysisFind which assumption would change the answer.
- Pre-mortemAsk how the chosen option failed, before committing to it.
Will this investment pay back?
- Break-even analysisFind the volume at which the costs are covered.
- Unit economicsCheck that each customer is worth more than they cost to win and serve.
- Investment appraisal: NPV, IRR and paybackCompare net present value, internal rate of return and payback against a hurdle.
- Monte Carlo simulationSee how likely the result is once the inputs are ranges, not points.
Why has growth stalled?
- Revenue bridgeSplit the change in revenue into price, volume, mix and churn.
- Issue treeBreak the question into parts that can each be tested.
- Competitive benchmarkingCompare the business with the alternatives customers have.
- From diagnosis to first revenueRun the diagnosis through to a first offering that earns revenue.
What could go wrong, and what are we doing about it?
- Risk registerRecord each risk with its owner, its score and the response.
- Bow tie analysisMap the causes and consequences of one serious event and the controls on each side.
- Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)Work through how each step of a process could fail.
- Business continuity planningPlan how critical services keep running through a disruption.
Which product ideas should we work on first?
- Jobs to be doneStart from the job the customer is trying to get done.
- Kano modelSeparate the features customers expect from the ones that delight them.
- RICE scoringRank ideas by value per unit of effort.
- Minimum viable product (MVP)Design the smallest test of the riskiest assumption.
How do we get people to adopt a change?
- Stakeholder mappingFind who has the power and the interest to make it succeed or fail.
- Change impact assessmentWork out what changes for each group of people.
- ADKAR modelFind the point at which each group is stuck.
- Communication plan for changePlan who hears what, from whom and when.
Is the technology ready, and should we build it?
- Technology readiness levelsJudge how far the technology is from use in the field.
- Technology radarDecide which technologies to adopt, trial, assess or hold.
- Build, buy or partnerChoose whether to build, buy or partner for a capability.
- Technology roadmapLay the technology out against the products and the market it serves.
Should we buy, partner with or sell a business?
- Joint ventures and strategic alliancesChoose the structure of a partnership before choosing the partner.
- M&A due diligence frameworkFind what would change the price or the decision before signing.
- Synergy assessmentSize the synergies with their cost, timing and probability.
- Divestiture strategyTest whether a business is worth more to another owner.
How do we turn a strategy into work people do?
- Strategy mapShow how the objectives connect, from capabilities to results.
- Balanced scorecardGive each objective a measure, a target and an initiative.
- Objectives and key results (OKRs)Set a few outcomes for the quarter and how progress will be judged.
- Hoshin KanriCascade a small number of breakthrough objectives through the organisation.
Where does AI pay in this business?
- AI opportunity portfolioRank AI candidates by what it costs to find out whether they work.
- Evidence classificationMark each figure as filed, calculated, reported or judgement before it carries a decision.
- Digital maturity modelSee where the organisation is ready and where it is not.
- Build, buy or partnerDecide how to source each capability.
Every framework
Nothing matches. Try a shorter word, or clear the filter.
Strategic planning
Setting direction, choosing what not to do, and keeping a plan connected to the measures that show whether it is working.
SWOT analysis
Strengths and weaknesses inside the business against opportunities and threats outside it, sorted so the list can carry a decision.
Business Model Canvas
Sets out who a business serves, what it offers, what it takes to deliver and how the money works, then tests the evidence behind each part.
Balanced scorecard
A short set of objectives and measures across the financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth perspectives, so a strategy is tracked by more than its financial results.
Hoshin Kanri
Turns a few breakthrough objectives into this year's priorities, measures and owners at each level, agreed by negotiation between levels rather than handed down.
Strategy map
A one-page chain of cause and effect from people and systems, through processes and customers, to financial results, showing how a strategy is meant to create value.
PESTLE analysis
A scan of the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental changes outside a business that bear on one decision, with the effect of each written down.
Objectives and key results (OKRs)
A short list of qualitative objectives, each with a few measurable key results, set for a quarter, tracked weekly and graded at the end against the numbers.
Scenario planning
Builds four plausible, different futures from the two most uncertain forces, then finds the moves that work in all of them and the signs that show which one is arriving.
VRIO framework
Tests each resource or capability for value, rarity, cost to imitate and organisation, to find which ones can give an advantage that lasts.
Gap analysis
Compares where a business is with where it needs to be, area by area, sizes each gap, and assigns the action and owner that will close it.
Porter's generic strategies
Places a business and its rivals by source of advantage (lower cost or differentiation) and by scope (broad or narrow), so the choice of how to compete is made explicitly.
Growth strategy
Where the next revenue comes from, what each kind of growth costs, and how to test a move before funding it.
Ansoff matrix
Four ways a business can grow, sorted by how far each moves from the products and markets it already knows, and so by how much risk it carries.
BCG growth-share matrix
A portfolio of businesses plotted by market growth and relative market share, to decide where cash should come from and where it should go.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Maps what an industry competes on as a strategy canvas, then redraws the offer by eliminating, reducing, raising and creating factors, so it stands apart instead of competing head on.
GE-McKinsey nine-box matrix
Plots each business unit by the attractiveness of its industry and its strength within it, on a three-by-three grid, to decide where to invest, where to be selective and what to harvest.
Three Horizons of growth
Sorts growth initiatives into the core business (horizon 1), emerging businesses (horizon 2) and options for the future (horizon 3), so all three are funded and managed at the same time.
Revenue bridge
Splits the change in revenue between two periods into price, volume and mix among customers kept, and revenue from customers lost and won, so the causes of growth or a plateau can be seen.
Market entry strategy
Works through whether to enter a market, which one first, when, by what route, with what offer, what success looks like and when to leave, with evidence at each step.
From diagnosis to first revenue
Five gated stages from diagnosis to a first commercial offering, each with the evidence that has to exist before the next stage starts.
Marketing strategy
Who the customer is, what they are trying to get done, and what the offer, the brand and the message have to say to them.
4Ps of marketing
Product, price, place and promotion: the four decisions that put an offer in front of a customer, set together so that each supports the others.
STP: segmentation, targeting and positioning
Splits a market into groups that buy differently, chooses the few to serve, and decides what the offer should stand for with them.
Brand pyramid
Builds a brand from the base up: awareness first, then what it does and stands for, then what customers think and feel, and loyalty last.
Content strategy matrix
Sorts content by whether it appeals to emotion or reason, and by whether it builds awareness or helps someone buy, to see where a content plan is thin.
Customer journey map
Follows one type of customer through every stage of a task, recording what they do, think and feel, to find where the customer journey breaks.
Value Proposition Canvas
Tests an offer against the jobs, problems and outcomes one customer group cares about, weighted by how much each matters, and shows where the fit is weak before more is built.
AARRR pirate metrics
Follows a product's customers through five steps (acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue) to find the step where most of them are lost.
Competitive and market analysis
How attractive a market is, who else is in it, how big the prize is, and where the advantage actually sits.
Porter's Five Forces
How rivalry, buyers, suppliers, new entrants and substitutes divide the profit in an industry, and which force sets the limit.
Competitive benchmarking
Compares your performance with the competitors customers choose between, on the measures they use to choose, weighted by how much each matters.
Competitive positioning map
Places competitors on the two dimensions buyers use to choose, with bubbles sized by market share, to show where the market is crowded and where it is empty.
External analysis: PESTLE and Five Forces
Scans the wider environment with PESTLE and the industry with Porter's Five Forces, then reads the two together into the opportunities and threats a decision faces.
TAM, SAM and SOM
Sizes a market in three nested layers (all the spend there is, the part you can serve, and the share you can win) and checks the result from the bottom up.
Value chain analysis
Breaks a business into the activities that create value (primary and support) to show where cost sits and where the advantage over rivals is made.
Risk management and assessment
What could go wrong, how likely and how bad, what is already in place to stop it, and how much uncertainty a plan really carries.
Enterprise risk management (ERM)
Sets how much risk the board will accept in each category of risk, names an owner for each, and checks whether actual exposure sits inside that appetite.
Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
Takes a process or design step by step, lists how each step can fail, and ranks the failures by severity, how often they occur and how likely they are to be caught.
Bow tie analysis
Draws one serious event at the centre, the threats that could cause it on the left, the consequences on the right, and the barriers that stop each path.
Risk matrix
Defines what each likelihood and impact score means in money, customers, service and safety, and how the scores combine into ratings, so every team scores risk the same way.
Risk register
The working record of what could go wrong, how likely and how bad it is, what is being done, and who owns it.
Risk heat map
Plots a portfolio of risks on one likelihood and impact grid, before and after controls, so a board can see which risks the controls actually move and which stay hot.
Monte Carlo simulation
Runs a plan thousands of times with each uncertain number drawn from its range, to show how likely the total is to land where you need it.
Operational risk management
Assesses the risks in each business process from people, processes, systems and external events, rates how well the key controls work, and tests those ratings against actual losses.
Pre-mortem
Before a project starts, the team imagines it has already failed and writes down why, which brings out risks that optimism and politeness usually keep quiet.
Cyber risk framework (NIST CSF 2.0)
Rates cyber security in each of the six functions of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 on the four implementation tiers, now and where the business needs to be.
Decision making and problem solving
Ranking options, assigning who decides, and finding the root cause before paying for a fix.
Eisenhower matrix
Sorts tasks by how urgent and how important they are, so that important work which is not yet urgent gets time before it turns into a crisis.
MoSCoW prioritisation
Sorts the requirements for a fixed deadline into must, should, could and won't have this time, so that scope gives way when work runs late and the date holds.
RACI matrix
Records who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed for each piece of work, so every decision has exactly one owner.
RICE scoring
Rank product ideas by reach times impact times confidence, divided by effort, so the list reflects value per unit of work rather than who argued loudest.
Decision tree analysis
Lay out each option, what could happen after it, how likely each outcome is and what it is worth, and compare options by expected value.
Weighted decision matrix
Scores each option against the criteria that matter, weights the criteria by importance and ranks the options by weighted score, excluding any that fail a minimum.
Cynefin framework
Asks what kind of situation you are in (clear, complicated, complex or chaotic) before choosing how to decide, because each kind calls for a different way of acting.
Five whys
Asks why a problem happened, then why that happened, until the answer reaches a cause the organisation can change, usually about five steps down.
Fishbone diagram
Lays out the possible causes of one problem by category (people, process, technology, materials and data, environment, and measurement), so a team looks wider than its first guess.
Pareto analysis
Ranks the causes of a problem by how much each contributes, largest first, to show the few causes behind most of the effect and so where a fix pays most.
Issue tree
Breaks one question into sub-questions that do not overlap and together cover it, so analysis goes where the answer is and nothing important is missed.
Evidence classification
Labels every claim in an analysis as filed, calculated, reported or judgement, so readers can see what each figure rests on and no decision rests unknowingly on an unverified report.
Change management
Moving people and organisations from how things work now to how they need to work, with the resistance and the communication planned rather than discovered.
ADKAR model
Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement: the five things a person needs, in order, for a change to stick.
Kotter's 8 steps
Eight steps leaders take, in order, to carry a large change through an organisation, from creating urgency to anchoring the new way in the culture.
Lewin's change model
Unfreeze, move, refreeze: loosen what holds the current way in place, move to the new way, then make the new way stable so it does not drift back.
Bridges transition model
Separates the change, which is an event, from the transition people go through to accept it: an ending, a neutral zone, then a new beginning, group by group.
Change impact assessment
Rates how much a change alters each aspect of the work for each group of people, then describes the heaviest impacts and the support each one needs.
Change readiness assessment
Rates whether an organisation is ready for a particular change on seven dimensions, from the case for change and sponsorship to capacity, skills and resources.
Resistance management
Records who is resisting a change, what it looks like, why, and how much it matters, then matches the response to the cause rather than to the noise.
Communication plan for change
Sets out who needs to hear what about a change, from whom, through which channel, when and how often, and how each audience can answer back.
Stakeholder mapping
Places each stakeholder by their power over a decision or change and their interest in it, to decide who to manage closely, keep satisfied, keep informed or monitor.
Force field analysis
Lists the forces pushing for a change and the forces holding it back, weighs each, and plans which to strengthen and which to weaken.
Organisational transformation roadmap
Lays out a transformation's workstreams, from governance and people to processes, technology and customers, against time, with owners, dependencies and the test for done.
Innovation and product
Finding the job a customer needs done, testing the riskiest assumption cheaply, and managing a portfolio of bets from idea to launch.
Design thinking
Solve a problem from the user's side: watch the people who have it, restate the need, then try several ideas as cheap prototypes with real users before building anything.
Jobs to be done
Describe the progress a customer is trying to make, list the outcomes they use to judge it, and find the outcomes that matter most and are served worst today.
Lean Startup
Run a new product as a series of experiments: state each belief as a hypothesis, test it cheaply against a pass mark set in advance, and decide to persevere, pivot or stop.
Minimum viable product (MVP)
Design the smallest test of the one assumption most likely to sink a new product: what to build, who sees it, what it costs and which result would change the plan.
Stage-Gate process
Moves a new product from idea to launch through stages of work separated by gates, where the project is given a go, kill, hold or recycle decision against criteria agreed in advance.
Kano model
Sorts product features by how their presence and absence change satisfaction (must-be, one-dimensional, attractive or indifferent) from a pair of questions about each feature.
Disruptive innovation theory
Tests whether a new entrant or technology fits the pattern of disruption (a low-end or new-market foothold that improves until mainstream customers switch) or is a sustaining rival.
Innovation ambition matrix
Places each innovation initiative by how far it moves from today's customers and today's products, as core, adjacent or transformational, and compares the spending mix with a benchmark.
Innovation radar
Rates how much a business innovates on each of twelve dimensions of its business system, from offerings and customers to processes and presence, against where it needs to be.
Open innovation framework
Records the ideas, technology and partners that flow into the business and out of it, with what each side gives, what it gets and who owns the result.
Lean Canvas
Puts a new venture's customers, problem, offer, reach and money on one page, then ranks the assumptions behind it so the riskiest is tested first.
North star metric
Choose the one measure that best captures the value customers get from a product, the few inputs teams can move to drive it, and the counter-metrics that keep it honest.
Opportunity solution tree
Connects one measurable outcome to the customer opportunities that could drive it, the candidate solutions for each, and the tests that would show which solution works.
International strategy
Choosing which countries, how to enter them, how much to adapt, and how to organise a business that operates across borders.
CAGE distance framework
Measures how far a foreign market sits from home on cultural, administrative, geographic and economic distance, so that market size is not mistaken for attractiveness.
Country selection matrix
Scores candidate countries against weighted criteria (size, growth, competition, regulation, distance, cost to serve and fit) to choose where to expand next.
Glocalisation strategy
Decides element by element which parts of an offer stay the same in every market and which are adapted locally, with the reason and the cost of each adaptation.
Integration-responsiveness framework
Places each business, product or function by its pressure for global integration and its pressure for local responsiveness, to decide what to run centrally and what locally.
Market entry modes
Compares the ways to enter a chosen foreign market, from exporting and licensing to alliances, joint ventures, acquisition and greenfield, on control, commitment, risk and speed.
Born global strategy
Plans how a young company sells in several countries from or near its founding: the global niche, the lead markets, the channels and partners, and what waits.
Political risk assessment
Lists the ways a government or a political event could damage an investment abroad, scores each for likelihood and impact, and names the mitigation and the owner.
Uppsala internationalisation model
Tracks each foreign market's stage of commitment, its psychic distance and what has been learned there, so the next step abroad follows knowledge rather than ambition.
Cross-cultural management
Compares how teams from different cultures decide, disagree, give feedback and treat deadlines, so a cross-border team can agree explicit working rules where it differs most.
Global value chain configuration
Decides, activity by activity, where the value chain is performed (concentrated or dispersed across countries), how tightly locations are coordinated, and who runs each part.
M&A and corporate strategy
Buying, combining, separating and partnering: the diligence before the deal and the integration or separation after it.
M&A due diligence framework
The workstreams, questions and red flags a buyer works through before signing, with every finding tied to the price, the contract terms or the decision to walk away.
Post-merger integration
The plan that takes two companies from signing to one working business, by workstream and across the periods that matter: before closing, day one, the first 100 days and the first year.
Synergy assessment
Each cost, revenue and capital synergy sized by its yearly value, the one-off cost of achieving it, when it arrives and how likely it is, so the total can be set against the premium paid.
Acquisition integration scorecard
Tracks an integration after closing: a few measures per dimension, each with a baseline, a target and the latest actual, rated red, amber or green against where the plan says it should be by now.
Carve-out strategy
Sets what leaves with a separated business and what stays, the shared assets and contracts to untangle, the services the parent provides after day one, and the costs left behind.
Corporate restructuring
Lists the portfolio, operational, financial and organisational levers open to a business under pressure, with the cash each releases, when it lands, how risky it is and who owns it.
Divestiture strategy
Scores each business in a portfolio on fit, parenting advantage, performance, value to another owner and separation complexity, to find which to keep and which someone else would own better.
Spin-off analysis
Compares keeping a business with selling it, spinning it off to shareholders, listing a stake or forming a joint venture, on value, tax, time, dis-synergies, standalone viability and distraction.
Joint ventures and strategic alliances
Compares the ways to work with a partner (a contractual alliance, an equity alliance, a joint venture or an acquisition) on the same criteria, then sets out the charter for the structure chosen.
Partnership go / no-go decision record
Eight tests to rate before signing a partnership, a weighted evidence score out of 4 in which an unassessed test scores nothing, and a gate that flags any single failed test.
Leadership, teams and culture
Matching leadership to the situation, building teams that work, and making the culture something that can be described and changed.
Situational leadership
Match how much direction and support you give each person to their competence and commitment on a specific task, and change the style as they develop.
Tuckman's stages of group development
Five stages a team passes through (forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning), used to judge where a team is and what its leader should do next.
Emotional intelligence (EQ)
A structured reflection on the five components of emotional intelligence at work (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill), to choose what to develop.
Performance management cycle
Agree weighted objectives and measures, gather evidence through the period, review against it at the end, and turn the result into development actions.
Delegation matrix
Place each task you could hand over by the skill and will of the person who would take it, then choose how much authority to give, from telling them what to do to handing it over.
Team Canvas
Helps a team agree why it exists, who does what, how it will work and what each member needs from the others, in one session of about two hours.
Competing values framework
Describe an organisation's culture as a mix of four types (clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy), now and as it needs to be.
Culture canvas
Compares what an organisation says with what its people actually do, practice by practice, then decides which practices to keep, change and start.
McKinsey 7S framework
Seven elements of an organisation (shared values, strategy, structure, systems, style, staff and skills) checked for how well they fit one another before and during a change.
Operations and resilience
Taking waste and variation out of how work flows, and keeping the business running when something breaks.
Lean
Find and remove the waste in how work flows to the customer, by naming each kind of waste where it happens and fixing its cause.
Six Sigma DMAIC
A five-phase project method (define, measure, analyse, improve, control) for cutting defects in a repeated process, with the defect rate measured before and after.
SCOR model
A reference model of the processes in any supply chain (orchestrate, plan, order, source, transform, fulfil, return), used to find which process holds performance back.
Business continuity planning
Decide which activities must come back first after a disruption, how fast and with how much data loss, and check that the plans can actually achieve it.
Crisis management framework
Prepare for, detect, respond to, communicate through, recover from and learn from a crisis, with each stage owned and ready before it is needed.
Value stream mapping
Map every step from request to delivery with its working time, waiting time and first-time quality, to see how little of the lead time adds value.
Theory of constraints
Find the one step that limits how much the whole system delivers, and manage everything else around it before spending on capacity anywhere.
Technology management
Judging how ready a technology is, deciding what to build, buy or partner for, and steering an architecture and a digital programme over time.
Technology readiness levels
A nine-step scale from a basic principle observed to a system proven in operation, used to judge how close a technology is to being usable.
Technology adoption life cycle
Sorts the buyers of a new technology into innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards, and plans the move from visionaries to pragmatists.
Digital maturity model
Rates how far an organisation has turned digital ambition into practice across strategy, customer, operations, technology, data, people and governance, now and as needed.
Wardley mapping
Maps the components that meet a user's need by how visible each is to the user and how far it has evolved, from genesis to commodity, so each is sourced to suit its stage.
Technology roadmap
Market needs, products, technologies and resources laid out against time, so each technology investment can be traced to the product and customer need it serves.
Build, buy or partner
Compares building a capability in house, buying it, partnering for it or using open source, scored on differentiation, speed, cost, control, capability and risk.
Technology radar
Places the technologies and practices an organisation uses or is watching in four rings (adopt, trial, assess and hold), so teams know what to use, what to try and what to stop.
Technical debt quadrant
Sorts technical debt by whether it was taken on deliberately or inadvertently, prudently or recklessly, and prices each item's interest and principal to decide what to pay down.
Architecture decision record
A short record of one significant architecture decision: its context, the options considered, what was decided and its consequences, kept with the system so later teams know why.
Business capability map
Plots what the business must be able to do by current maturity and strategic importance, sized by spend, to show where to invest, maintain, monitor or outsource.
AI opportunity portfolio
Ranks candidate AI projects by expected value per dollar spent finding out whether they work, and scores zero any candidate with no decision owner or no falsifier.
Finance and valuation
The arithmetic under a decision: break-even, cash flows, value, unit economics, and how sensitive the answer is to what you assumed.
Break-even analysis
How many units, or how much revenue, a product needs before it covers its fixed costs, and how far the plan sits above that line.
DCF valuation
Value a business or asset as the present value of the free cash flow it will generate, with a terminal value for the years beyond the forecast.
Investment appraisal: NPV, IRR and payback
Decide whether a project earns more than the return the business requires, using its net present value, internal rate of return and payback period.
Unit economics
Whether each customer is worth more than it costs to win: margin per month, lifetime, lifetime value, acquisition cost and the months it takes to pay that back.
Sensitivity analysis
Move one assumption at a time between plausible low and high values to see which ones shift the result most, and which could reverse the decision.
Total cost of ownership
Every cost of an option over its life, from purchase through running, people and exit, so options are compared on what they cost rather than on price.
Spectrum valuation by comparables
Value a spectrum holding as bandwidth times population covered times the price per MHz-POP that comparable auctions and transactions paid.
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