PM Career Management SWOT Analysis

You have likely come across a SWOT analysis before. It stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats, and is often written as a simple 2x2 matrix like this:

Strengths Weaknesses

Opportunities Threats

This template applies the SWOT concept to your career development plans, and while that above format
would work, I’ve broken each of the sections out separately to allow for a little more detail. Complete each
section independently, but remember that success ultimately comes from addressing all of the sections in
parallel. You are always seeking to:

 Build on your strengths to advance your career in the short to medium term
 Address areas of weakness to prevent them from becoming barriers to future progress
 Seek out ways to leverage opportunities and turn them into strengths
 Monitor threats, addressing ones that have the potential to become weaknesses or similar
barriers to progress

Review and update the contents of each section regularly, and at least once a year seek to add new items
and remove anything that is no longer appropriate within each category.

Strengths
Key strengths How can I use this? Progress updates

Guidelines for this section

 Key strengths – What aspect of your current skills and experiences are the key strengths that
you possess? Don’t just think about obvious capabilities; focus more on things that set you apart
from others—those are your strengths relative to them. Are you one of the few PMs in your

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 organization with agile and waterfall experience? Are you seen as an expert in risk management?
Do you have more experience with certain types of projects?
 How can I use this? What are the things that you can do to take advantage of those skills? That
may be securing a prime project assignment, gaining a promotion, or successfully competing for
a job at your dream employer. It could also simply be that it will allow you to become better known
by leaders, that it means you have enough experience to sit the PMO or something similar.
Remember that a strength is only a strength if you use it.
 Progress updates – Regular updates on the progress you are making to achieve what you have
identified in the “How can I use this?” column. If you aren’t able to put regular updates here, then
ask if you are actually making progress or whether things are stalled (and if so, what you need to
do about that).

Weaknesses
Weaknesses Action plan Target Updates
date

Guidelines for this section

 Weakness – The skill, knowledge area or other career element that you need to address. This
should be an immediate limitation, not a future potential problem (that would be a threat); and
they could be anything from a lack of certification to a weakness in one aspect of project delivery.
 Action plan – What you are going to do to address the weakness. There may be multiple items
in your action plan (for example, taking training, gaining a certification, receiving coaching and
gaining more experience).
 Target date – Use this either for separate target dates for each item in your action plan, or as a
date for completing all action plan items (whichever provides more motivation for you).
 Updates – Use this section for key achievements in addressing each weakness. Seeing yourself
record progress here will help maintain your motivation and demonstrate that you are addressing
your current weaknesses.

Opportunities
Opportunities Why is this an opportunity? What am I doing?

Guidelines for this section

This section has a lot of similarities with the Strengths section, but these are focused more on outside

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factors. Strengths are personal to you; opportunities are environmental aspects that you can apply your
strengths to in order to progress your career.

 Opportunities – What is an environmental factor that exists, or is emerging that you can take
advantage of? Examples might include a major upcoming project that you may be able to get
appointed to lead, or a company in your industry that is going through an aggressive hiring
process. But it could also be something like the growth of artificial intelligence, which represents
opportunities for PMs who understand it. Or it could be something as simple as an executive
coming to visit the team to discuss progress on a project.
 Why is this an opportunity? Opportunities are only opportunities because of how you view them
and plan to take advantage. AI is an opportunity right now, but if you look at it in a different way
(or take different actions), it can also be a threat. Use this section to connect the dots between
the opportunity and how it can benefit your career.
 What am I doing? Identify here the steps you are taking to ensure that the opportunity benefits
you. It’s tempting to simply say that you are monitoring things, but try to seek out positive steps
you can take to try and “force” the aspect to benefit you. To continue the AI example, you can use
PMI Infinity, ask for training from your organization, research the discipline and how it is being
used in AI, etc. Always stay focused on why the item is an opportunity and how it will ultimately
benefit your career.

Threats
Threats Why is this a threat? What am I doing?

Guidelines for this section

This section has a lot of similarities with the Opportunities section; in fact, you may have the same items
in the two sections (like the example of AI). These are again external factors, but this time they have the
potential to damage your career progression. In some cases, that damage can come about as a result of
taking the wrong actions; but in most cases, the failure to respond to a threat becomes the problem. This
section is therefore critically important.

 Threats – What is an environmental factor that exists (or is emerging) that has the potential to
damage your career? Besides major disruptors like AI, this could be changes in your
organization, progress being made by colleagues, shifting industry expectations, etc. (For
example, in recent years the shift for PMs to focus on business outcomes rather than the triple
constraint represented a threat to those who weren’t comfortable with the business context.)
 Why is this a threat? What could happen that would make this external factor a problem? Use
this section to connect the dots between the environmental aspect and potential damage to your
career, a future weakness, etc.
 What am I doing? Identify here the steps you are taking to ensure that the threat doesn’t harm
you. It’s possible that simply monitoring is enough, but try to be positive and proactive. Actions
will likely focus on upskilling and expanding experience to ensure that the threat cannot become a
weakness to your career (or that, ideally, you can convert it into an opportunity).

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