The SWOT-matrix is a strategic planning tool used to understand and identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in an organization.

Strengths: Which characteristics of the business or project gives it an advantage over others?

Weaknesses: Which characteristics of the business or project places it at a disadvantage relative to others?

Opportunities: Which elements in the environment could the business or project exploit to its advantage?

Threats: Which elements in the environment could cause trouble for the business or project?

Why use the SWOT-matrix?

Using the SWOT-matrix has many advantages:

• Intuitive way to map internal characteristics of your business and external elements in your environment that may affect your business
• Lets you visualize how you can use your strenghts to exploit opportunities or reduce risks
• Easy way to structure your brainstorming and encourage conversation in your team

How to Create Your SWOT-matrix in Upwave

The easiest way to utilize the SWOT-matrix is to use an online tool, like Upwave, where you can update the canvas in real-time and collaborate with your collageus. To get started with SWOT in Upwave, go to templates and choose “SWOT”. To add a card, just click inside the box where you want to add it. Try to keep the text short and concise. Use different colors for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Get started with your SWOT-matrix

Lean Canvas was created by Ash Maurya (leanstack.com) and is an adaptation of Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder. Lean Canvas is optimized for the Lean Startup methodology, and the emphasis is on finding customer problems that are worth solving.

The 9 building blocks in Lean Canvas are as follows:

1. Problem: What are your customer’s problems and how are they solved today?

2. Customer segments: Who are your target customers and what are their characteristics?

3. Unique value proposition: Why are you different and worth paying attention to?

4. Solution: What are the possible solutions for each problem?

5. Unfair advantage: What advantage do you have that can not be easily copied or bought?

6. Revenue streams: What are your sources of revenue?

7. Cost structure: What are your fixed and variable costs?

8. Key metrics: What are the key numbers that tell you how your business is doing?

9. Channels: What is your path to customers?

Upwave now integrates with Zapier, which lets you automatically create cards in Upwave whenever there’s a trigger in any of the 1000+ connected apps.

Automated connections called Zaps, are set up in minutes with no coding. You can automate your day-to-day tasks and build workflows between apps that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.

Each Zap has one app as the Trigger, where your information comes from and which causes one or more Actions in other apps, where your data gets sent based on your set-up.

To learn more, read our guide which explains step-by-step how to create a Zap from scratch. Or jump straight into the action and try out one of the popular premade Zaps below.

To connect Upwave with thousands of other apps, including Gmail, GitHub, and Slack, head to Upwave’s Zapier integration page.

We are working on expanding our system templates to fit even more of your business processes, and the first one out is the Business Model Canvas!

What is the Business Model Canvas?

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management tool developed by Alexander Osterwalder (www.strategyzer.com). It helps you visualize your business model in a logical way on a single page. The canvas consists of 9 building blocks which covers the four main areas of a business; Offer, customers, infrastructure and financial viability.

The 9 building blocks are as follows:

1. Customer segments: Which customer groups are you creating value for?

2. Value propositions: What value do you deliver to your customers?

3. Channels: How do you reach your target customers?

4. Customer relationships: How do you interact with your target customers?

5. Revenue streams: How much will you make?

6. Key resources: What do you need? Which resources does your value proposition require?

7. Key activities: How do you do it? Which activities does your value proposition require?

8. Key partnerships: Who will help you?

9. Cost structure: What will it cost?

How to use the Business Model Canvas

The easiest way to utilize Business Model Canvas is to use an online tool, like Upwave, where you can update the canvas in real-time with your collageus. To get started with Business Model Canvas in Upwave, go to templates and choose “Business Model Canvas”. To add a card, just click inside the box where you want to add it. Try to keep the text short and concise. Use colors to create links between different aspects of your business model.

Start by filling out customer segments (which customers are you serving?) and then value propositions (which customer problems and neds are you solving?). Then continue with channels (how are you delivering value to your customers?). customer relationships (what kind of relationships do you need to establish and maintain?) and revenue streams (how much money are you going to make?).

Now that you’ve finished the customer and revenue aspect, it’s time to look at the infrastructure and costs. Start by filling out the key resources (which assets does your value proposition require?) and key activities (which activities does your value proposition require?). Continue with key partners (who will help you?) and finish with cost structure (what will it cost?). You now have a one page visualization of your business model!

Get started with your business model canvas

Our pre-made Upwave templates makes it easier for you to get things done. Choose a template that fits your workflow or customize it to your needs.

General template for daily task management

This is a basic kanban board consisting of a three-step workflow; “To do”, “In progress” and “Completed”. Use it to keep track on all your personal tasks, tasks within a team or a project. Simply add your tasks in the “To do”-column, move them to “In progress” when you’ve started them and to “Completed” when they’re finished. Use the colors to categorize your tasks based on e.g. priority.

Template for weekly meeting

Meetings are much more productive if you have an agenda and stick to it. Especially if all notes and information from a meeting is available in real-time for everyone in the meeting. In this template the columns are “Agenda”, “Action items” and “Completed”, and each row represents a week. Add the agenda for the meeting in the first by using the check-list, so you can easily check of items in the meeting. You can also put notes from the meeting in the same card as the agenda, to make it easy for everyone to look at what was discussed in the meeting. Put action items that needs to be done after the meeting in the next column, and assign it to the person responsible. When an action item is done, move it to the “Completed” column. Use the colors to categorize the action items based on departement, team members or priority. In this example, we have categorized based on departement.

Template for prioritizing tasks

Great time management means being effective as well as efficient. In the modern, fast paced workplace it can be hard to distinguish between what’s important and urgent. We often fall in the trap of believing all urgent tasks are also important, even if that’s seldom the case. The Eisenhower Matrix gives you a visual overview of how to prioritize your tasks based on urgency and importance.

1. Urgent and Important: DO
If a task is both urgent and important, do it right away.

2. Not Urgent, but Important: DECIDE
If a task is important, but not urgent, set a due date and do it later.

3. Urgent, but not Important: DELEGATE
If a task is urgent, but not important, the best thing is to delegate it to someone else.

4. Not Urgent and Not Important: DELETE
If a task is neither important nor urgent, it should not be prioritized. Drop it or do it when you have some extra time.

Template for hiring processes

A picture says more than a thousand words. In this template we have used cover images instead of colorcoding. The columns are “Applicants”, “Interview” and “Offer”. In applicants you create a card for each person who has applied for the job. You can also attach their resume or other files. If they get an interview, you move the card over to the next column. You can also add comments you have after the interview. Lastly, when you have decided who gets the job, you move the card over to “Offer”.

Template for sales processes

This template is perfect for visualizing your sales pipeline. The columns are “Leads”, “Contacted”, “Meeting scheduled”, “Proposal sent”, “Won” and “Lost”, but you can customize them to fit your own process. Start by creating a card for each lead, where you  fill in information on the company. Move the cards around based on where they are in the sales pipeline. You can use colors to categorize your leads based on their readiness to buy.

Not an Upwave user yet? Sign up for free here

Our users wanted the possibility of having multiple teams under the same organization, so we created Upwave Workspace. Instead of creating a team when you signup, you will now create a workspace. Inside this workspace, you can create several teams, e.g. for different departments, project groups, external suppliers etc.

From Single-Team to Multi-Team

Before workspace, you created a team-url when signing up and added all the members in your organization to that team. If you wanted to divide your organization into different teams or departments, you could do this by creating groups for your boards. You could, however, not add members to groups – only to the boards inside a group. With the introduction of workspace, you can now create multiple teams inside your organization.

While a major change in itself, the launch of Workspace also signals a direction for the platform. We will emphasize collaboration, teams and breaking down silos even more in the future.

Why Is This Awesome News?

What will this launch mean for you and your organization?

For Big Organizations

If you’re a big organization with a lot of employees, you don’t want your shared workspace to be cluttered with all the projects everyone is working on – but at the same time, you want to have all your employees inside the same workspace. With the introduction of multi-teams, you can now create different departments or project groups inside your organization. The employees will then only see workspace visible (public) teams and teams they are invited to. This way, your employees can focus on the tasks and projects that are relevant to them.

For Collaborating With External Clients/Suppliers

If you are working with clients or suppliers that you don’t want to see everything inside your organization, you can easily create a team for your collaboration. This way you don’t have to worry about them getting access to confidential information, because they will only be able to see boards inside that specific team. When a project is over, it’s easy to revoke their access to the team or delete it.

For Small Organizations

Even if you are a small organization, you will still get advantages of multi-teams. You can look at it as a way to organize your boards, which makes it easier to structure different areas of your business. Before this release, you could see all non-private boards, even if you weren’t a part of them. Let’s say you only work with marketing, you can now create a team for marketing, where only the marketing team are members. When you log in to the workspace, the marketing team is all you will see. Where as before, you would also see all the tech, admin, and sales boards – even if you weren’t a part of them.

Key Benefits:

• Users can collaborate in multiple, separate teams, within the same organization workspace
• Improved access rights and security control – allowing easy involvement of outside parties on demand (customers, contractors and partners)
• Teams can be assembled and dissolved with a few clicks – useful for short term projects
• Workspace administrator(s) can manage the entire account, and have full overview of all teams and workspace activity
• Individual teams assign their own administrators, with full control of details

Great time management means being effective as well as efficient. In the modern, fast paced workplace it can be hard to distinguish between what’s important and urgent. We often fall in the trap of believing all urgent tasks are also important, even if that’s seldom the case. In fact, most stuff trying to get our brain’s attention are usually trivial, non-important tasks, with a high sense of urgency.

The Eisenhower Principle 

The Eisenhower Principle originates from a quote attributed to the former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower:

“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” 

The principle is pretty simple. You evaluate your task in terms of urgency and importance, and then place them in different quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix, which gives you a visual overview of how to prioritize your tasks.

Urgent vs Important

Let’s start by defining what constitutes an important task and an urgent task.

URGENT

A task defined as urgent requires immediate action or attention.  Examples:

• Crises
• Pressing problems
• Projects with deadlines
• Interruptions (calls, meetings, emails)

IMPORTANT

A task defined as important often relates to long-term goals. Examples:

• Planning, research, design, testing
• Capability improvements
• Relationship building
• Developing change, direction and strategy

The Eisenhower Matrix 

The Eisenhower Matrix consists of four different quadrants, based on urgency and importance. The quadrants are as follows:

1. Urgent and Important: DO

If a task is both urgent and important, do it right away.

2. Not Urgent, but Important: DECIDE

If a task is important, but not urgent, set a due date and do it later.

3. Urgent, but not Important: DELEGATE

If a task is urgent, but not important, the best thing is to delegate it to someone else.

4. Not Urgent and Not Important: DELETE

If a task is neither important nor urgent, it should not be prioritized. Drop it or do it when you have some extra time.

Obviously, what you need to tackle first are tasks that are BOTH urgent and important. It’s also easy to see that tasks that neither urgent nor important should be the last priority. However, it can be difficult to decide what to focus on when it comes to tasks that are “not urgent and important” or “urgent and not important”. This is where it’s important to remember that if you focus all your time on urgent tasks, the important tasks will never get done. Urgent does not equal important.

By using the Eisenhower Matrix you get a better picture of how to prioritize your tasks. Start by doing what’s important, ranked by urgency. If you have capacity do to some of the non-important tasks, do them after you finished all important tasks – or delegate/drop them depending on urgency.

Create Your Own Eisenhower Matrix in Upwave

Upwave supports both columns, rows and colorcoding of cards, which makes it a perfect tool to create your Eisenhower Matrix. Start by creating two columns, “Urgent” and “Not urgent”. Then turn on rows, and create a row for “Important” and “Not important”. Now, you have the structure.

Create the colors you want to use for the 4 different categories; Do, Decide, Delegate, Delete. We have used red (Do), green (Decide), yellow (Delegate) and blue (Delete), but there are no rules – use the colors you prefer! When you’re all set up, start adding your tasks in each quadrant.

1. Do right away

2. Decide when to do it

 3. Delegate to someone else

4. Delete/Drop

In this case, the red tasks would be done right away. For the green tasks, you would set a deadline for each (which is very easy in Upwave!) and then get started on them after the red tasks. The yellow tasks should be delegated to someone else (if possible), while the blue tasks should be dropped.

Key takeaways

• Urgent does not equal important: What is important is seldom urgent and vice verca
• The Eisenhower Matrix: Helps your categorize your tasks, so you can get your priorities straight!
• If a task is important and urgent: Get it done right away – no procrastination.
• If a task is important, but not urgent: Set a deadline and get it done by then. Make sure you do it!
• If a task is urgent, but not important: Then it’s just a distraction, so delegate it to someone else.
• If a task is neither urgent nor important: Well, then you don’t prioritize it at all. Drop it!

Sources

Baer, Drake. (2014). “Dwight Eisenhower Nailed A Major Insight About Productivity”. Business Insider

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1954). “Address at the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Evanston, Illinois”. The American Presidency Project

McKay; Brett; Kate (2013). “The Eisenhower Decision Matrix: How to Distinguish Between Urgent and Important Tasks and Make Real Progress in Your Life”. The Art of Manliness.

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