Analysts can sometimes begin an assessment with an incomplete mental picture of the subject. The most obvious strengths, weaknesses, risks, or opportunities tend to dominate early thinking, while less visible factors receive less attention or are missed altogether.
A SWOT table provides a simple way to counter this. By forcing you to examine a subject from these four key perspectives, it can broaden the scope of your analysis, expose gaps in your understanding, and reduce the chance that your assessment is being driven by only one side of the evidence.
Used properly, it is a quick way to organise what you know before moving into deeper analysis.
