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The business impact analysis is one of the most important components of the business continuity management planning process. During the analysis, you identify how potential disruptions would impact your key business functions and the overall performance of your organization.

In this post, we will cover everything you need to know about business impact analysis along with useful templates that you can use to get a head start on the planning process. 

What is a Business Impact Analysis

As the name implies, the BIA process identifies the exposure and impact of specific threats or disruptions to your business functions and to your organization.

Consequences of such a disruption can include financial loss, reputational loss, and loss of competitive position in addition to potential loss of staff, loss of data, and even loss of access to buildings. 

The business impact analysis consists of evaluating the critical business functions of the organization, analyzing the potential disruptive impact on them, and gathering information needed to develop recovery strategies via which the resources required to recover and resume them in the case of a disaster will be determined.

A business impact analysis usually consists of the following steps that are to be led by the BCP (Business Continuity Plan) manager;

• Establishing business impact criteria using the BIA questionnaire  
• Prioritizing the importance of each business unit against the established criteria 
• Consolidating the findings and rankings 
• Presenting the final results to the executive management to confirm critical classifications and priority listings 

Elements of a Business Impact Analysis

A successful BIA should produce the following deliverables.

• Detailed report of information on,
  • Prioritized critical business functions 
  • Classification of criticality 
  • Tolerable limits 
  • Restoration priority 

• Impact analysis (both quantitative and qualitative) of unavailable business functions and the problems and damages caused by their unavailability. 
• Minimum resources that are needed to recover the prioritized critical business functions.

When to Conduct a BIA

The BIA can be used when you need to, 

• Evaluate the impact of disruption on a business function or process within the organization. 
• Determine and understand the extent to which key functional and operational dependencies exist within the organization.
• Establish the priorities and the sequence in which the disrupted key business functions and IT systems should be restored.

The Importance and Benefits of a Business Impact Analysis 

A BIA is a self-evaluation process that can lead to the following advantages. 

• Provides necessary information for both decision-making and for incorporation into the business continuity plan.  
• Helps identify the key business processes that are critical to the survival of the organization, and directs effort and resources toward what matters. 
• Assesses the effects of disruption to key business operations or processes within the organization. 
• Helps the entire organization get involved in business continuity planning, while allowing each head of a business unit to evaluate operations and assign a value to downtime. 
• Identifies the equipment and resources needed to run critical business functions and ensures their availability. 
• Assesses the impact it would have on revenue, investor support, customer service, competitive advantage, and market share in case a critical business function cannot be performed. 
• Helps identify the vital resources that are needed to maintain normal key operating conditions in a cost-effective manner. 

BIA vs Risk Assessment

Whereas the risk assessment seeks to identify the threats that will affect the business and minimize the likelihood of disasters happening, the business impact analysis seeks to establish the optimum balance between recovery timescale and cost, which helps to justify the expenses on risk countermeasures and on recovery capability. 

Although risk assessment and business impact analysis are treated as separate activities, for all practical purposes they are both parts of the overall risk management techniques of an organization. 

BIA vs. Disaster Recovery Planning

The BIA is one of the vital steps in disaster recovery planning. The BIA is used to evaluate and gather information about the precise effects of the disaster on the organization. The BIA, which identifies critical business functions and the impact of disruption on them, provides the necessary insight to define disaster recovery strategies in response to disasters.

BIA vs. Business Continuity Planning

Business Impact Analysis and risk analysis are areas of business continuity management. While the business continuity plans are based on information, the risk analysis and BIA provide that information and lay the foundation for all related plans. 

How to Conduct a BIA

Here we have listed down the steps you need to follow to conduct an effective BIA. 

Plan your BIA process

A business impact analysis is a project in itself. And like any regular project, it needs planning. With a proper plan establishing the scope of the analysis, goals and objectives, project team, timeline, budget, and the stakeholders involved, you will be able to see it through to the end without unexpected hurdles.  

Gather information

In order to conduct an effective BIA, you should have a first-hand idea of and information on, 

• How the key business processes work
• Inputs and outputs of the process
• Resources and tools required
• Duration of the process
• End-users of the process
• Potential disruptions to the process
• Financial, operational, and legal impacts of such threats

You can gather this information by,

• Talking to or interviewing process owners and stakeholders 
• Creating and sharing a business impact analysis questionnaire to gather information on business functions, support systems, and IT systems

Verify and Analyze Information 

Validate and verify the accuracy of the information gathered through the questionnaires with business process owners and business unit coordinators. 

As you analyze information, identify the business functions that are vital to keeping your business moving forward. List down these processes along with the necessary resources such as employees, raw materials, equipment, etc. that are needed to keep them operating and establish a timeline and budget for their recovery. 

This way when one of the processes gets disrupted, you will know which one to reinstate first and easily determine which resources are absolutely essential.  

Document and Present Findings

During this phase of the analysis, you need to prepare the executive summary and the BIA report. The objective of the business impact analysis report is to provide the necessary insight the senior management needs to develop data-backed recovery strategies. 

While the report should include recovery priorities supported by data graphs, charts, and other visual aids, present the findings, recommendations, and subsequent steps to the senior management in both written and oral reports. 

The BIA must be re-visited and updated as the business changes due to organizational and technological changes. 

BIA Templates

Blank Business Impact Analysis

Business Impact Analysis Report Template

How Can Creately Help When Conducting a BIA

Visual tools to communicate and collaborate better

You can create anything from simple flowcharts to complex work breakdown structures with Crately’s standard shape libraries for over 50 types of diagrams. Whether you are simply mapping a process, creating visual aids for your BIA report, or putting together a dashboard for a presentation, you can easily do it on Creately.  

Centralize all your information

Bring in all information about your business processes, stakeholders, and teams onto the canvas with integrated notes and database capabilities. Creately has full-on documents for every single shape on the workspace, letting you store a multitude of information whether it’s a step in a process map or a cell in a stakeholder registry. Create a single source of truth for your teams during your BIA project.  

Coordinate all your work in a single place  

Creately’s built-in agile project management tools, including project views (i.e Kanban boards, timelines, Gantt charts, etc.), role assignment, progress tracking, and integrations, allows teams to streamline running their projects right inside the app. 

Real-time collaboration    

Keep your team engaged and collaborate like you are in the same room despite where you are. Real-time mouse tracking, synced previews, comments and discussion threads, advanced sharing and permissions, and version history to keep track of changes.  

Got More Tips on Doing a Business Impact Analysis?

Conducting a business impact analysis can be time-consuming and require considerable effort, but the outcome can be instructive and valuable. At the end of it, you will have gained valuable insight into your organization and its functions that is necessary to move it forward. 

We hope this guide will help you conduct a successful BIA. 

Got any more tips to share? Let us know in the comments section below. 

Whether you work hybrid or remote, having to switch contexts and apps multiple times during the day is part and parcel of a typical workday. Creately’s latest integration with Microsoft Teams introduces a better way to work with teams and collaborate. We’re truly excited that this integration creates a seamless platform for teams to brainstorm, plan, run projects or document knowledge that’s always linked to the current context.

Our Approach with MS Teams

When you work with remote teams, smoother communication, work management and real-time collaboration is key to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Thus, when we started working with Microsoft, we approached this problem with a few ideas.

• Visuals make a huge impact in making things easier to understand
• The collaborative content you create must be easily found and referenced
• When people have the big picture, then they need the details. And it should always be ready at hand
• Meetings are essential, but the context of pre, during and post-meetings are also important and need to be planned if we are to improve the overall efficiency of teams around meetings

So with those in mind, we think we have a winner in our hands with Creately for Microsoft Teams.

What We Bring to the Table

A Collaborative Free Form Canvas for Teams

With Creately there are no rigid structures or limitations such as docs or sheets. We provide a free-form visual workspace for you to collaborate with remote teams in real-time. Simply pin any Creately workspace or folder to an MS Teams channel and you are good to go!

A Place to Pin Ideas or Discuss the Problem

Drag and drop anything from docs, sheets, JPEGs or PDFs into the canvas to unify all information related to a particular task/project in one place to analyze. Bounce ideas off team members and get instant feedback. You can edit any Creately workspace within MS Teams without having to switch back and forth between apps.

The Best Way to Get Everyone on the Same Page

Share workspaces in live meetings and use Creately’s superb whiteboarding capabilities with asynchronous editing.

How to Install?

Activate Creately in MS Teams

• Select the ‘Manage Apps’ in MS Teams and search for Creately in the Teams App Store.
• Click on the check mark next to Creately and select Allow.
• A dialogue box will appear. Click Allow to let users access Creately in Teams.
• You can click on the application to view or change its permissions.

Adding Creately to Team Channels

• Select the Apps icon on the left sidebar of the Teams window.
• Search for Creately
• Click on the application and press the Add button
• Sign in to Creately, and you are on track to supercharge collaboration with Creately and MS Teams.

Add Creately to MS Teams to stay in sync and top of your task list. Work visually with over 1000+ templates to get a head start. Manage your work the way you want with a free-form, flexible infinite canvas that you can set up according to your preference. Unify all information related to a particular project under one workspace and easily share it with the team, with multiple access levels and roles.

Learn more about Creately for MS Teams.

No matter the team or the industry you are in, Creately can help you build workflows, manage processes, manage work, ideate and plan projects so that you will be able to uncover new trends and new ways to work. 
Install Creately for MS Teams today by visiting the Teams App Store!

PI Planning is an essential part of the Scaled Agile Framework^TM . It is a great way to get your teams aligned and focused on what’s important. However, it can be tough to know where to start. This guide will walk you through the basics of PI Planning and what you need to include in your agenda to achieve successful planning outcomes. 

What is PI planning?

Program Increment planning, or PI planning, is a cadence-based event that is essential to the successful execution of agile releases. It is at the core of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all teams on the ART to a shared mission and vision.

PI planning sessions are regularly scheduled events held throughout the year where multiple teams in the same Agile Release Train meet to discuss features, the way forward, the roadmap, and cross-team dependencies. 

The PI Planning event is usually organized by the Release Train Engineer (Scrum Master) and is held over a 2-day period that includes 8 to 12 weeks of program increments.

An organization can decide on when to have the PI sessions. For example, many companies schedule PI planning at the beginning of a program increment and after the inspect and adapt iteration, while some opt to have the sessions quarterly. These sessions happen regularly on a fixed schedule allowing project managers or relevant teams to plan ahead of time.

SAFe or Scaled Agile Framework^TM is a set of guidelines and practices that support larger organizations to adopt agility. It consists of four steps; planning, execution, adaptation, and reflection. SAFe is accepted as a methodology that increases visibility, alignment, and collaboration among different teams and levels resulting in better productivity and delivery.

Remote PI Planning

PI Planning sessions are traditionally held in person. However, the pandemic changed the workplace irrevocably where locating different teams and team members in one place, in person, is not always possible. As such, the priority is to gather all relevant teams who are part of the work in real-time to be present in the planning. To facilitate and support these sessions remotely, a host of online tools and necessary technologies are used.

Why is PI Planning Important?

PI planning is essential for companies of all sizes but is especially valuable for large organizations that may have 100-200 teams and 1000s of developers. Previous to introducing PI planning, these teams did not have any communications with each other and therefore information would be cascaded down from the leadership and management level leading to conflicts in resources, budgets, and work.

With PI Planning in place, proper communication protocols enable teams to get together and discuss what they’re working on and ensure that dependencies are understood and managed effectively. For example, situations where two teams working on different features without realizing there’s a dependency that could hold up the release or require a significant rework of the code, could be avoided. 

During PI Planning sessions, teams and team members meet face-to-face (remotely or in person), paving the way for one-on-one interactions that would result in better cooperation in future work. At the end of a PI planning session, the teams are equipped with a plan that includes iterations, backlogs, objectives, and risks for the next program increment.

PI Planning in a nutshell enables, 

• structured communications and visibility 
• collaboration and better synchronization among different teams 
• effective work, alignment on tasks and objectives
• ability to release features in less time and to stay within a budget.

Planning the Event

There are three steps for successful PI Planning.

1. Organizational readiness: Make sure that all stakeholders and leaders in the program are available to participate. It would be best if PI planning sessions are scheduled in advance and teams are sent reminders.
2. Content readiness: The vision and purpose of the PI session and the program need to be well prepared and in hand in time for the session. This should be clearly communicated to all participants on the first day.
3. Logistics preparation: Arrange a large room, if in person, a Microsoft Teams or team Zoom call that can accommodate all participants. In remote sessions, use breakout rooms to divide the teams into small groups so that they can engage with each other more.

Before a PI event, besides the above steps, ensure that the below-mentioned items are identified and established as well. 

• Project vision and goals
• Project scope, constraints, timeline, and milestones
• Resources required
• Roles and responsibilities

Agenda

The agenda of the PI planning event plays a critical role. It is the framework that guides participants on what needs to be covered in order for all to understand their role in building and executing the agile release train. The agenda should always be kept simple and easy so that participants can focus on what matters the most: delivering value.

While PI planning or remote PI planning may be different for each organization, there are certain similarities. Below is the standard agenda for a two-day PI planning session that you could follow.

Business Context

An update about the current business status, portfolio vision, and how effective the current solutions are in addressing customer needs. This is usually presented by the business owner or a senior executive.

Product/Solution Vision

This entails the current vision, which includes the top 10 upcoming features, any changes from the prior PI planning event, and prospective milestones. The product/solution vision is typically presented by Product Management.

Architecture Vision & Development Practices

The architecture vision and agile-related changes for improvements to the infrastructure, development process, and communications in the upcoming PI. The Architect/Engineering department takes the lead in presenting the architecture vision and development practices.

Planning Background

An outline of how the planning process works and what is expected.

Breakout Sessions

Several breakout sessions, two at least, spread out during the two days. For the first session, teams will work to identify their capacities, backlogs, risks, and dependencies to come up with draft plans that include initial team PI objectives to be shared with others. These PI objectives consist of goals that are included in the plan but are not committed due to unknown factors or risks. 

In the second session, which typically takes place on the second day, teams will continue to work on the plans and make adjustments as necessary. The objectives for the PI are finalized by the teams before being handed over to the business owners or senior management to assign business values.

Draft Plan Review

Teams present draft plans for feedback. Here teams are encouraged to communicate and identify associated dependencies with other teams or agile release trains. The session is a tightly timeboxed sitting where teams present key planning outputs, draft PI objectives, potential risks, and dependencies. Business owners and other teams provide input after each team presents.

Management Review

Business owners, stakeholders, and management will meet to address challenges presented in the draft plan to propose solutions or changes. Special attention will be paid to challenges in scope, resource issues, and dependencies. During the management review and problem-solving meeting, the management will look into sorting scope changes, resolving various issues, and making adjustments.

Final Plan Review

Each team presents its plans to the group. After each presentation, each team highlights risks, dependencies, and barriers. The plan is presented to the business owner and management for approval. If the plan is approved, the PI objectives are put forth for everyone to see. If the management has certain concerns, the team is provided time to address the concerns and present the revised plan.

Program Risks

Teams will identify risks that impede achieving objectives during the planning session. The identified risks will be presented to the whole group and addressed with transparency. During this process, the risks will be categorized as below. 

• Resolved: the risk is no longer a concern and has been resolved
• Owned: a member of the group takes ownership of the risk, which cannot be resolved during the discussion
• Accepted: some risks are understood and accepted as potential issues or the reality of the situation 
• Mitigated: a plan is identified to reduce the impact of the risk

Retrospective

A brief retrospective is held to obtain feedback on the event and what needs to be improved for future events.

Inputs and Outputs of PI Planning (Useful Templates)

Inputs

• Business context

• Roadmap and vision

• Top 10 features of the program backlog

Outputs

• Committed PI objectives: this includes a set of SMART objectives created by the teams with the value of the business assigned by the owners of the business.

• Program board: include dates as to when the new features will be released, dependencies among teams, and milestones.

Tips for Successful Remote PI Planning

Remote PI planning events are ideal for distributed teams. It’s cost-effective and allows all teams to participate regardless of their location. Besides the three important steps mentioned in ‘Planning the Event’, it would be important to keep note of the following for a hiccup-free remote event.

Online tools are your go-to platform

Use online tools to confirm participation, share information, conduct meetings and interact in real-time. Also, have a dedicated team to facilitate the sessions and provide support. 

Create a schedule and sign up sheets well in advance

Create the PI planning event’s schedule and inform stakeholders well in advance. Ask participants to sign up to confirm their participation.

Select the right time

With distributed teams, chances are team members are scattered throughout the world in different time zones. When selecting the time for the event, be mindful of the time differences and ensure that the event does not go beyond 6-8 hours. 

Etiquettes to follow

To avoid miscommunications, and unnecessary interruptions, circulate a list of etiquettes to follow. For example, request all team members to have their cameras turned on and to actively participate. Also, make sure to let them know when it is acceptable to talk and when to keep their mics muted. 

Avoid monotony and build trust

Provide participants some respite by including several 5-minute breaks and also ice breaker sessions to keep things interesting and to build trust.

Record the session

Livestream and record the session. This is useful for team members who may miss the session due to unavoidable circumstances or if you need to refer back.

Avoid surprises 

Stick to the shared agenda and communicate with participants regarding their roles and expectations. 

PI planning sessions are an essential part of agile release management. Make sure to attend a few sessions each year to stay on track and ensure successful product delivery.

Use Creately for your Remote PI Planning

Creately has a host of tools to make your PI planning virtually seamless from the very start.

• Whiteboard and freehand drawing capabilities to brainstorm and collaborate on important ideas, risks, and dependencies.
• 1,000 plus templates and shapes to start preparing the agenda and other needed formats for the PI planning sessions ahead of time to share with the members of the agile train. 
• In-app audio and video conferencing to liaise with other team members to brainstorm and discuss the preparations.
• Share workspaces and folders with peers and colleagues. Multiple access and role levels to manage, share, edit and review along with multiplayer capabilities to collaborate in real-time.
• Integration with MS Teams to conduct your meeting and manage the project board all in one place

Initiate your next PI Planning or Remote PI Planning session with Creately to experience the best of visual project management!

Proper process documentation template is an integral part of project management. Documenting essential project processes and information help set up a project in an efficient and easy-to-understand manner, and ultimately ensure its success.

In this post, we will look at why project documentation is important and go over the essential and other useful project documents that are created throughout the life cycle of a project. All templates provided are customizable; click on them to start editing.  Use the menu below to navigate easily.

Project Initiation 

• Project Plan 
• Project Charter 
• Business Requirements Document
• Statement of Work 

Project Planning

• Project Proposal 
• Team Charter 
• Project Budget
• Project Communications Plan
• Project Schedule
• Work Breakdown Structure
• Risk Register
• Project Scope Statement
• Stakeholder Register
• Project Organizational Chart 

Project Execution & Closure

• Project Status Report
• Project Closure 
• Lessons Learned

What Is Project Documentation?

Project documentation entails creating and maintaining project management documents throughout the different phases of the project life cycle. These project documents allow the project manager to adequately manage, control and deliver the project. 

Importance of Project Documentation

Documenting important details of the project thus helps you and the team verify that the ideas being implemented actually make sense. Project documentation simplifies clarifying project expectations and goals, breaking down the deliverables into manageable tasks, managing resources, and keeping all stakeholders on the same page.  

In addition, it also helps with,  

• Retaining knowledge collected over the course of past projects, which allows to streamline onboarding new employees or new project team members.
• Increasing clarity and transparency of the team workflows allowing for better cross-functional team alignment.

Top 10 Essential Project Documents 

Following are the essential project management documents that should be created during each phase of the project lifecycle. 

Project Plan 

The project management plan – or project plan – is a comprehensive document that outlines how the project is executed, monitored, and controlled. It may include baselines, subsidiary management plans, and other planning documents. It highlights vital project information such as deadlines, assignments, and key milestones and is usually represented in the form of a Gantt chart. 

Project Charter 

The project charter is a short document that explains what a project entails. It describes what the project goals are, who is involved and their responsibilities, and the stakeholders, and defines the authority of the project manager.  It is created in line with the business case for the project as described by the project sponsor.

Business Requirements Document

The business requirement document explains the business solution for a project based on business or customer needs and requirements. It describes the purpose of the project, the business solution it provides, features and functionalities, as well as the project timeline. It synthesizes input from stakeholders and analysis of the current business situation to provide a technology-neutral description of what the product should do.

Project Budget

The project budget is the total estimated cost of  a project. It includes a detailed estimate of all costs, such as labor costs, material procurement costs and operating costs, that are likely to be incurred during the completion of project tasks over each phase of a project. It helps with establishing expenditure expectations and with getting project approval from stakeholders, ensuring funds are ready at the right time, and measuring performance.

Project Schedule

A project schedule is your project’s timeline, it consists of all the sequenced tasks, activities, and milestones that need to be completed in a certain timeframe. Creating a project schedule is a way of communicating all the tasks that are needed to be performed, while clarifying what resources are needed, and under what time frame.

Risk Register

The risk register, which is also referred to as a risk log, is a document that contains information about identified risks such as the nature of the risk, the level of risk, who is responsible for it, and the preventative measures, and corrective action in place. It serves as a brainstorming framework to establish risks and as a database of possible and potential risks and mitigation measures for them.

Project Scope Statement

A project scope statement describes the work that needs to be done to deliver the project outputs on time and within the budget. The project scope statement template outlines what is being delivered (within scope), what is not being delivered (out of scope), assumptions to clarify the deliverables, and high-level requirements. 

Project Communications Plan

A project communication plan is a guideline of what, when, and how key project information will be shared at key intervals with invested stakeholders. It includes what kind of information will be distributed, to whom, and how often they will be updated.

Project Status Report

The project status report is a document that outlines the project’s overall progress against the projected project plan. It helps keep all project stakeholders informed about the high-level information such as milestones, work accomplished, risks, and roadblocks.

Project Closure 

The project closure report is a  document that formalizes the closure of the project. While it helps determine whether or not a project was successful, it provides confirmation that the criteria for customer acceptance have been met and requests sign-off from the Project Sponsor to close the project.

Other Useful Project Management Documents 

While the documents we’ve listed above are essential to ensure project success, there are multiple other project documents that will further contribute to accelerating its successful completion.

Statement of Work 

A statement of work is a document that describes the requirements of a project. It serves as an agreement between a client and an agency or service provider and defines the entire scope of work involved for a vendor, project deliverables, costs, and timeline.

Project Proposal 

The project proposal is a document that lists down all aspects of a project including its background, vision, goals, tasks, requirements, owners, associated risks, etc. Its purpose is to provide a summary of the project details and rally support for the project idea from stakeholders.

Team Charter 

A team charter basically explains how a team plans to get its work done. It focuses on why the team exists, the objectives the team is designed to accomplish, and how it is going to achieve them. The purpose of the team charter is to get everyone on the same page and keep them focused.

Work Breakdown Structure

The work breakdown structure is a diagram that helps break down large projects into smaller and more manageable parts which contain the project deliverables that it will complete. It divides project deliverables into sub-deliverables and work packages which define the work, duration, and costs for the tasks that need to be carried out.

Stakeholder Register 

The stakeholder register is a document that details information about the stakeholders of a project. This contains their names, contact details, the role they play in the project, their power over making project decisions, and their needs, concerns, and expectations. It serves as the basis for team formation, assigning roles and responsibilities, defining success criteria, and planning stakeholder communication.

Project Organizational Chart 

A project organizational chart is a visual representation of the team members and the roles they play in a given project. It illustrates the hierarchy and the reporting relationships between the team members. They help with allocating resources, clarifying responsibilities, and setting expectations regarding the effort required from each individual.

Lessons Learned

A lesson learned report can be used to document all the key challenges, risks, uncertainties, and blockers you have come across during a project along with the timely solutions you have implemented. Lesson learned reports are designed to guide you as you work toward achieving the desired outcomes, so it helps you and others who will work on a similar project in the future to avoid the hardships and easily achieve the expected outcome.

How Creately Can Help Streamline Project Documentation 

Creately – a work management software that runs on a visual canvas – can help you streamline creating, organizing, managing, and sharing the project management documents that are important to the success of your project. 

Creately is a simple tool with simple yet advanced features that even a non-technical user can easily learn. It has intuitive navigation with drag and drop functionality which makes organizing content effortless. Plus it integrates with tools you use every day such as Google Suite apps, Confluence, Jira, Slack, MS Teams, etc. making it easy to keep your project assets in sync. 

Easy-to-Use Visual Tools to Get Started

Creately offers multiple shape libraries, pre-made templates, and powerful diagramming capabilities to visualize and organize your project-related data in easy-to-understand visual structures such as Timelines, Kanban boards, WBS diagrams, Flowcharts, etc. 

With the database capabilities which can be accessed via the Shape Data panel, you can store unlimited data and information within a single shape in a structure and easily create wikis and project knowledge bases. For example, you can expand your Work Breakdown Structure that outlines project deliverables with additional data fields to capture information on due dates, owners, cost, etc., or provide a detailed overview for each deliverable with notes.    

A Single Source of Truth 

Creately’s unified workspaces operate on an infinite canvas, letting you place multiple documents side by side in a single location. While you can attach and embed resources, documents, images, and links with in-app previews, you can also import external data in Google Sheets, Excel, or CSV files into Creately and organize them as meaningful visuals, keeping all project-related assets centralized in the same workspace.  

Note: Easily search and locate any information across workspaces and folders with universal text search option. 

Advanced Collaboration and Sharing Capabilities

Creately offers a collaborative and secure online platform to simplify creating, updating, and sharing your project documents with stakeholders. Collaboration features such as true multi-user collaboration with concurrent editing, real-time cursor tracking, offline syncing, contextual comments and discussion threads, and in-app audio and video calls help streamline cross-functional project team workflows, whether the teams are co-located, remote, or hybrid. 

Creately folders and workspaces come with multiple access and role levels (Owner, Editor, Commentor, and Viewer) allowing you to manage how you share your project documents with internal and external stakeholders. 

Note: Set workspace status through workspace preferences and mark it Draft, In Progress, In Review, Approved, Final or Archived to indicate its review status. 

Streamline Project Documentation With Creately

Documenting all aspects of a project will help the success of your project in many ways. Whether it’s to clarify the terms of an agreement to clients or suppliers, to fulfill legal requirements, to keep your team aligned, or to keep track of project updates, maintaining proper project documentation for key processes and information is the key.

Project documentation may seem tedious, but with the right tool and techniques, you can not only simplify the process of documentation but also ensure that the final output is effective. Try Creately today to simplify and improve your project documentation process. 

Understanding and recognizing your target audience correctly is, perhaps, the most crucial step in any successful marketing strategy. A well-established target audience can drive a brand’s growth, marketing strategies and equity, leading to the overall improvement of the bottom line. In this post, we will go through the key elements that you will need to conduct a target audience analysis.

What is a Target Audience?

A target audience is the pool of potential customers in your business. It is a group of people who are most likely to be interested in purchasing your product or service. People in an identified target audience share certain similar demographics, such as gender, location, age, socioeconomic status, and education, to name a few.

What is a Target Audience Analysis?

Target audience analysis involves the research of a range of demographics and psychographics. All information obtained is then analyzed to provide useful data that will help to inform consumer insights and, most importantly, customer pain points and buyer personas. 

A few questions that a target audience analysis will help you to answer are:

• Who are your customers and what markets can you capitalize on?
• Who are your competitors?
• How can you reach potential customers?
• Are you reaching the right group of people with the right messages?
• What products or services do they want? 
• How can you personalize the user experience?
• How do the customers benefit from your products/services?
• What is your customer’s price point?
• What are the groups affected by your business or service?

Customer Pain Points

Customer pain points are challenges or issues that a current or prospective customer faces in the marketplace along the buyer’s journey. A few examples of customer pain points are money, health, and communication issues. One key point in a marketing strategy is to identify the pain points to provide solutions that will build confidence and trust among customers.

Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is the detailed description of an individual that best represents your target audience. The persona is a semi-fictional profile that is built on in-depth research. By creating a buyer persona, you can better understand and prioritize the requirements of your audience that will help to create a marketing strategy, which targets your ideal customer segment. (To learn more and to start creating buyer personas check out The Easy Guide to Creating a Buyer Persona with Free Editable Templates).

Why is it Important?

Customers are at the heart of any business or service. Without their support, a business could not be successful or profitable. Therefore, one of the most important goals of any business is to increase their customer base. In order to do so, it is crucial to identify who best resonates with your product or service, as this can affect your business strategy and product development decisions as well. 

Certain research has shown that without a correctly identified target audience, businesses struggle to keep afloat and to create an effective marketing strategy to reach potential customers. (To know more about marketing intelligence strategy, check out How to Implement a Successful Marketing Intelligence Strategy).

Benefits of a Target Audience Analysis

• By identifying and targeting audiences that are uniquely interested in your products and services, you can convert interested parties to customers faster
• Ability to put together cost-effective marketing strategies that save valuable resources, time, money and effort.
• Ability to create personalized content that is effective and result-driven.
• Identify the requirements of customers and meet them to increase customer satisfaction.
• Increase the number of customers by increasing the conversion rates.
• Strengthen your market position to increase market share and establish your brand in the market.

What are the Types of Audience Analysis?

There are three main types of audience analysis. 

1. Demographics
   • Demographic data includes, but is not limited to, age, gender, income, employment status, location, and education.
2. Psychographics
   • Psychographics is a qualitative method that focuses on consumers’ psychological traits, such as values, opinions, attitudes, interests, goals, and lifestyle. Identifying these traits will lead you to understand the potential pain points of your customer segment. However, psychographic data is subjective when compared to demographic data that relies on hard statistics. The main areas to focus on would include interests, hobbies, and opinions.  
3. Situational
   • Situational analysis helps to make a realistic assessment of your business by defining potential customers, evaluating projected growth and assessing competitors.

How to Identify Your Target Audience?

There are many ways to identify your target audience. It is always best to use several methods to pin down your target audience to be comprehensive. 

Surveys

Surveys involve a series of questions asked from a group of respondents. You can ask your selected audience their interests and preferences through a survey. However, before you start, make sure to define your goal, audience to be surveyed, tools and relevant questions. You can use platforms such as Creately’s Likert Scale Template, Google Forms and Survey Monkey. 

Google Analytics

It is no secret that Google is the most popular search engine. Google Analytics collects information from websites and store records. Information collected includes time spent on each site, number of visits, and other important consumer behaviors. This gathered information provides insight into your existing customer base and those visiting new.

Facebook and Instagram (social media sites)

Social media sites are all about creating content and reaching targeted audiences. Users of Facebook and Instagram rely on Insights to inform their content direction. You can track metrics such as likes, follows, shares and profile visits to study what content gets the most engagement.

Competitor Websites

Observe and analyze your competitors’ websites and social media presence. 

Online Forums, Groups and Blogs

Join in a few online groups and forums such as Reddit and Quora to explore and join in relevant discussions. All these forums cover a broad range of topics that you can go through. Also, look into joining and observing niche forums that are relevant to your business and industry blogs.

Interviews

Interviews are usually conducted between a researcher and a respondent or as a focus group discussion. The interviews may consist of structured or unstructured questions. Focus group discussions involve gathering a group of people in a controlled setting where participants are asked a series of questions or are asked to discuss a product or service. 

Besides the interviews with external parties, you can also reach out to your sales team, customer service and marketing colleagues who are involved in the marketing or business process.

Feedback

You can get feedback via email or through a website form. Also reviews by customers would help to understand their outlook regarding your services or products.

Key Steps to Follow

Conduct a Market Research About the Industry and Outlook

Research about your industry, including statistics, growth potential, trends and the future outlook. Analyze the target market and understand the marketplace. 

Analyze the Competition

Identify your competitors and conduct a competitor analysis to get a comprehensive view of the market landscape. 

Analyze Your Market Offerings

Look into the problems related to your products or services along with whom it may appeal to.

Research and Identify Your Overall Market 

Collect demographic, location, and psychographic data. From the many identifying data segments collected, select three to five segments to ensure that the pool of customers is not too narrow or big to handle. 

Create Buyer Personas and Market Segments

Put together your ideal customer or buyer persona and segment the market by organizing the groups based on the demographics, psychographics, and other information collected. 

The Final Document

Forecast and note down the lead time, marketing costs, potential sales and other strategies. Put together all information, including the forecasted and target audience related data.

Use Creately for Your Target Audience Analysis

Creately has many tools that can support you in putting together your target audience analysis. 

• Powerful documentation capabilities with doc blocs and formatting to document all information. 
• Templates to get you started easily.
• Ability to create custom databases with multiple types of data sets. 
• Interactive data visualization by dragging and dropping data from any data source. 
• Note panel to add data and information.
• Teamshare to share workspaces and folders with your teammates to collaborate using an online whiteboard tool. 
• In-built video conferencing for meetings.

Try Creately to streamline your target audience analysis today!

Project management is a crucial step in ensuring the success of a project or process. While in the past there were only a limited number of methodologies to follow, today there are many established and verified frameworks practiced in Project Management… In this article, we will explore one such framework called Scrumban, an emerging hybrid system that combines the features of two widely used agile methodologies, Scrum and Kanban.

What Is Scrumban?

To understand  Scrumban, let’s first do a quick recap of Scrum and Kanban .

• Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams to work more productively. Projects are planned and executed in 1-4 week iterations called Sprints. In Scrum, a rigid structure is followed to manage work. This includes scheduled meetings, specific roles and review sessions aimed at improving future iterations.
• Kanban is a visual project management system that is ideal at managing tasks of a production cycle or process. Using a Kanban board, the workflow is visualized and managed continuously. No specific roles or meetings are scheduled as the team plans and review work based on demand, delivering what is required.

Kanban gained much popularity in the 21st century as an agile system. As a result, many teams that used Scrum sought to transition to Kanban, to take advantage of its flexible nature. To accommodate this need, Scrumban was designed as a transitioning step from Scrum to Kanban. However, it soon became clear that Scrumban was good enough to be a standalone project management framework and many opted to adopt it as another method to follow.

Scrumban combines the structured nature of Scrum with the flexibility and continuity of Kanban to deliver agility, efficiency, and productivity to a team. Let’s take a look at how Scrum, Kanban, and Scrumban compare.

When to Use Scrumban

Scrumban is still a relatively new player in project management and as such, there is still much to learn and observe. However, its versatility and the combination of the best features of Scrum and Kanban have provided a certain edge to win and convince many practitioners. Before you decide on the best method to follow, weigh in the pros and cons, the structure of your project and team along with limitations and requirements–if Scrumban is the perfect fit, then do dive in.

Scrum vs Kanban vs Scrumban

	Scrum	Kanban	Scrumban
Best for	Teams working on projects and processes taking more than 12 months.	Teams focusing on maintenance, support services and manufacturing.	Teams working on fast-paced projects and manufacturing. It is also ideal for large-scale projects that require long term planning.
Work cycles	1-4 week iterations with regular meetings, reviews and retrospectives.	No iterations. Continuous workflow.	2-week iterations complete with regular meetings, reviews and retrospectives.
Planning	Structured. Planning takes place at the beginning of each Sprint.	Flexible. Relies on a probabilistic approach, based on past workflow data.	Need-based or on-demand planning, integrated with the work-in-progress. Planning trigger is initiated whenever the number of tasks in the ‘work-in-progress’ falls below a certain level.
Roles and Responsibilities	Team members are assigned roles and responsibilities.	No specific roles. Members select their own tasks. The team consists of either generalists or specialists.	No specific roles. Team members are allowed to select their own tasks.
Task Prioritization	Prioritization is done before each sprint.	Prioritization is done based on need and on demand.	Prioritization is done on demand. Managers designate the order of priority.
Team Members	Recommended for a team of 3-9 members.	No specific limitations.	No specific limitations.
Work In Progress Limits (WIP)	Restricted to a Sprint.	Practices limiting WIP. Limits the number of tasks that can be pulled to the in progress column.	Practices limiting WIP. Limits the number of tasks that can be pulled to the in progress column.
Tools	Product backlog. Sprint backlog. Product increments.	Kanban Board.	Scrumban Board.
Ownership	Owned by one team.	Multiple teams can collaborate.	Multiple teams can collaborate.
Change Policy	No new items can be included in a Sprint.	New items can be added depending on the availability and capacity.	New items can be added depending on the availability and capacity.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Scrumban

Advantages 

• Easy to adopt as Scrumban is a visual project management process that can be easily fitted into any existing format.
• Scrumban teams perform better as they are free to select their roles and tasks. 
• Daily standups and reporting are not mandatory, which saves time, increases efficiency, and creates a more relaxing environment.  
• Scrumban encourages compartmentalization with bucket planning, prioritization, and short-term iterations. All these features are ideal for large-scale projects requiring long-term planning.
• Scrumban boards help to increase clarity and find bottlenecks in the workflow to resolve them quickly. Project managers can easily identify any task slowdowns to address them ahead of time. 

Disadvantages

• As Scrumban is new to the project management landscape, it is still largely untested. As such, there are still only a few established best practices to guide teams. 
• Lack of an effective setup for assigning tasks along with limited progress tracking may provide a significant challenge for project managers.

How Creately Simplifies Scrumban for Your Team

Creately is an ideal place to kickstart or continue your Scrumban journey. Each step of the project process can be visualized for easy tracking and team members can collaborate to ideate and solve issues in real-time, all in one place. Key features that will help you to start your Scrumban board and keep track of the project progress include: 

• The intuitive and infinite canvas to add timelines, scrumban boards, Gantt charts, and much more to visualize the project activities and progress.  
• Shape library complete with kanban boards, task cards, and a host of other visual tools to get a quick start in illustrating your Scrumban journey. 
• Easy drag and drop function with a color palette to customize the canvas according to your specific requirements. 
• Notes panel to include all relevant notes and details of each task/ project.
• Data panel to assign roles and set due dates and estimates to better track the progress of each activity. 
• Task panel to keep track of your selected project tasks.
• Notification panel to keep each team member updated on project-related activities.
• In-built video conferencing for quick catch-ups and meetings.

Join Creately to start your Scrumban experience today!