Whose SWOT?
SWOT analysis, its pitfalls, its alternatives, and a collaborative version for communicative planning and design
SWOT is the most used and most abused tool in strategic planning. Used badly, it produces long lists that nobody reads. Used well, it becomes a structured conversation about what a place is, what it could become and who decides. This page shows you both.
The classic SWOT ↓Pitfalls ↓Collaborative SWOT ↓Four boxes, two questions
A SWOT analysis sorts what you know about an area along two questions. Is it internal to the area, or external to it? Is it helpful, or harmful? Strengths and weaknesses are characteristics of the area now. Opportunities and threats are processes, trends and events, often at higher scales, that may shape it tomorrow (Rooij, 2003; Dąbrowski, 2018).
Strengths and weaknesses: characteristics and factors specific to the area. Static.
Opportunities and threats: processes, trends and events, possibly at higher scales. Dynamic.
Confusing weaknesses with threats, and strengths with opportunities, is the most common error. Test yourself. Decide first, then open.
A large regional park and a river landscapeThink first, then open +
An internal, positive quality of the area itself.
A national subsidy scheme for circular constructionThink first, then open +
External: it comes from outside the area, and the area can use it.
Fragmented governance between ten municipalitiesThink first, then open +
Internal to the region, and negative.
Rising sea levels and river dischargesThink first, then open +
An external trend that could harm the area.
A growing population of older residents in the regionThink first, then open +
A trend (external) or a characteristic of the area (internal)? Your boundary decides, and your values decide whether it is helpful or harmful.
A new metro line that will open in five yearsThink first, then open +
Planned, but not yet there. And it helps some groups while harming others. See the figure below.
Where SWOT came from. SWOT is often attributed to a single consultant in the 1960s. Recent archival research by Puyt, Lie and Wilderom (2023) traces it to an earlier planning approach called SOFT, developed at the Stanford Research Institute around Robert F. Stewart. Managers listed planning issues as Satisfactory, Opportunities, Faults or Threats, and subgroups discussed them with stakeholder needs in mind. The original was a group process. Much of that was lost when SWOT became a four-box template.
From four lists to strategies
A SWOT that stops at four lists has not started. The crucial step is the confrontation: what happens when a strength meets an opportunity, or a weakness meets a threat? Heinz Weihrich (1982) turned the four boxes into the TOWS matrix, and Kevin Kearns (1992) gave each combination a strategic name.
Use a strength to make the most of an opportunity: utilise, strengthen, develop further.
Use a strength to resist a threat: resist, contain, protect.
Use an opportunity to overcome a weakness: neutralise, dissolve, reverse. Or decide to let the opportunity pass.
The most serious combination: turn the tide before the weakness makes the threat a daily reality: turn around, eliminate.
A worked example from the TU Delft method sheet
The SWOT method sheet by Tejon Tomas Kraan and Remon Rooij uses the Kuip arena area in Rotterdam-Zuid (Kraan & Rooij, n.d.).
| Opportunity: growing attention to healthy lifestyles | Threat: flood risk from the river Maas | |
|---|---|---|
| Strength: a strong sports identity | Develop the identity into a sports centre for the city, the region or the country. | Resist flood risk by using the space for sports on, in and around the water. |
| Weakness: peak crowds and congestion on match days | Neutralise peak traffic by reorganising infrastructure from cars to bicycles and pedestrians. | Eliminate pressure on space by absorbing peak crowds above the water, for example with bridges. |
Then draw it. The sheet’s last step: depict the strategies. A schematic drawing, a set of symbols or a collage can say more than a page of text, and it makes the confrontation discussable.
Strengths of the SWOT
SWOT has outlived countless management fashions. The TU Delft method sheet and the course lectures name the reasons (Kraan & Rooij, n.d.; Dąbrowski, 2018).
It reduces a complex situation to a frame anyone can read in a minute.
A first version can be made in an hour, and improved over weeks.
It moves you from data collection and analysis into design, by turning findings into starting points, objectives and strategies.
Everyone can put their thoughts in the same diagram, which invites discussion within the team.
It justifies design choices: others can trace why you chose a direction.
A drawn SWOT is a means of communication with clients, residents and juries as well as a working tool.
Nine pitfalls
The critique of SWOT is as old as its success. In 1997 two scholars called for a ‘product recall’ (Hill & Westbrook, 1997). Most of the problems they found concern how SWOT is used. Open each pitfall for a remedy.
The endless list+
Hill and Westbrook (1997) reviewed 50 companies in a UK government support scheme; more than 20 had used a SWOT analysis prepared by consultants. They found long lists of more than 40 factors on average, described in general and often meaningless terms, with no prioritisation and no verification. Most damning: none of the outputs was used later in the strategy process.
Remedy. Keep three to five items per box. Rank them. Check each against evidence.
No ‘so what?’+
A list without a direction for policy or strategy. Issues multiply, and no solution comes into sight (Dąbrowski, 2018).
Remedy. Always run the confrontation. Every item that does not feed a strategy can go.
Internal or external?+
Strengths are confused with opportunities, weaknesses with threats. The result is a muddled frame.
Remedy. Ask: is this a quality of the area now, or a process acting on it from outside?
The boundary trick+
Whatever lies inside the boundary is ‘internal’ and therefore yours to act on; whatever lies outside is ‘external’ and beyond your responsibility. Drawing the boundary is therefore a political act.
Remedy. Agree the boundary with the actors involved, and say why you drew it there (Rooij, 2003).
Blue sky and silver linings+
Opportunities are imagined without evidence, and every threat is quickly reframed as an opportunity (Dąbrowski, 2018).
Remedy. For every opportunity, name who would have to act and what it would cost.
Snapshot thinking+
Strengths and weaknesses describe today. Regions change, and today’s strength can become tomorrow’s weakness.
Remedy. Combine SWOT with scenarios: is the strength still a strength in each future?
Subjectivity disguised as fact+
A SWOT looks objective, but every item reflects someone’s judgement, and prioritising is hard (Dąbrowski, 2018).
Remedy. Mark which items are factual claims, and which are evaluations. Say whose evaluation.
Averaging out conflict+
Different stakeholders sort the same factor into different boxes. A single, consensual SWOT hides that conflict, usually in favour of whoever held the pen.
Remedy. Make contested factors visible. That is the core of the collaborative SWOT below.
Blind to power+
SWOT asks what is helpful or harmful, but not for whom, nor who decides. It can make a strategy look neutral when it is not.
Remedy. Connect every strategy to the people who gain, lose and carry it out.
Every factor has a point of view
In communicative and collaborative planning, the planner’s job is to analyse a place and also to organise a conversation about it among people with different interests, knowledge and power (Healey, 1997; Innes & Booher, 2010). From that perspective the classic SWOT has a blind spot: it assumes that ‘helpful’ and ‘harmful’ are the same for everyone.
Figure 1. One factor, four quadrants. The same new metro line seen by four stakeholders. Illustrative.
Donald Schön and Martin Rein (1994) called such differences frames: underlying structures of belief and perception that make people see the same situation differently. Frame conflicts cannot be settled by more data alone. They need to be made visible and discussed. A SWOT that records only one frame has quietly taken sides.
A river landscape: strength or threat?Think first, then open +
A strength for ecologists and walkers; a threat for an insurer or a homeowner in the floodplain. Keep both readings, and design for both.
Rising land values: opportunity or threat?Think first, then open +
An opportunity for owners, investors and the municipal budget; a threat for tenants and small businesses. Your strategy decides who captures the value.
A large informal economy: weakness or strength?Think first, then open +
A weakness in tax and regulation terms; a strength as a source of livelihoods, skills and social networks. Which frame does your report adopt, and why?
Map the stakeholders, and empower
A collaborative SWOT starts with the question: whose knowledge and whose interests should shape it? The power/interest grid sorts stakeholders by their power over a decision and their interest in it (Eden & Ackermann, 1998; Bryson, 2004).
High power · low interest
Context setters. Keep them on board; they can block or enable the process.
High power · high interest
Players. Negotiate with them; they shape the outcome.
Low power · low interest
The crowd. Keep them informed; their interest may grow.
Low power · high interest
Subjects. Their stakes are high and their voice is weak. Build their capacity to take part and to shape the SWOT.
Why ‘empower’? Many versions of the grid label the high-interest, low-power corner ‘keep informed’. Eden and Ackermann call these stakeholders subjects (Bryson, 2004). In this course we call the quadrant empower, because the label sets a task for the planner instead of a category for the stakeholder. Keeping people informed leaves the distribution of power as it is. Empowering them asks you to change it: to give them time, information, resources and a real place at the table, so that their reading of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats counts.
Who sits in the empower quadrant of a regional strategy?Think first, then open +
Tenants, informal workers, young people, residents who do not speak the dominant language, future residents and, by proxy, ecosystems. Exactly the groups a desk-based SWOT tends to leave out.
Does empowering mean giving them the final decision?Think first, then open +
It means changing the conditions of participation: who frames the problem, whose evidence counts, whose priorities enter the confrontation matrix. See the levels of authority on the decoloniality page.
The collaborative SWOT
This version keeps the strengths of the classic SWOT and builds in what communicative planning adds: several voices, visible disagreement, explicit priorities and attention to power. It draws on Remon Rooij’s urban SWOT procedure at TU Delft (Rooij, 2003), on the TOWS confrontation (Weihrich, 1982) and on stakeholder analysis (Bryson, 2004). Notice how close it comes to the original SOFT approach, in which subgroups discussed issues with stakeholders in mind (Puyt et al., 2023).
Figure 2. The collaborative SWOT cycle. Nine steps, highlighted in turn.
1 · Agree aim and boundary+
With the actors involved, agree what the SWOT is for and where the area ends, or agree that the boundary stays fuzzy (Rooij, 2003). The boundary decides what is internal.
2 · Map the stakeholders+
Use the power/interest grid. Identify who must be empowered, and how they will take part: in person, through interviews, through role-play when they cannot be present.
3 · Perspective SWOTs+
Let each stakeholder group, or each team member playing a stakeholder, make its own SWOT. Write each factor on a card with the name of the group.
4 · Overlay and find contested factors+
Put all cards on one large grid. Where the same factor lands in different quadrants, mark it as contested. Do not average. Contested factors are where the strategy will have to choose.
5 · Prioritise together+
Each participant gives 5, 3 and 1 points to the factors they find most important in each quadrant. Keep the three to five factors with the highest scores (Rooij, 2003). Check whether the empowered groups’ priorities survived.
6 · Confront: find strategies+
Each participant distributes 10 points for each opportunity and threat over the strengths and weaknesses, to find the strongest relations (Rooij, 2003). Formulate SO, ST, WO and WT strategies for those. For each strategy, ask who gains, who loses and who must act.
7 · Conditions or wishes?+
Separate demands and conditions, which are not negotiable, from wishes and starting points, which are (Rooij, 2003). Be explicit about who declared something non-negotiable.
8 · Draw it+
Map the strategies. A spatial SWOT shows where strengths, threats and strategies are located, and makes them discussable with people who do not read tables.
9 · Return and revise+
Take the result back to the people who contributed, especially those in the empower quadrant. Record what was agreed and what remains disputed. Revise. Then begin again, with whoever was missing.
What you deliver. Four things: the stakeholder map; the overlay with contested factors marked; the confrontation matrix with strategies and their winners and losers; and a short record of agreements and disagreements. The disagreements are findings too.
Alternatives and companions
No single tool does everything. Choose by asking what your SWOT is missing.
| Tool | What it asks | Strength | Risk | Use it for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOWS matrix | Which strategies follow from combining internal and external factors? | Turns the SWOT into strategies. | Can still be done by one person for one interest. | Always, as the second half of a SWOT. | Weihrich (1982) |
| PESTELS scan | Which Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal and Spatial trends act on the area? | Systematic search for opportunities and threats. | A long list again; no internal view. | Before the SWOT, to fill the external boxes. | Dąbrowski (2018) |
| SWOC | Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. | ‘Challenge’ invites action where ‘threat’ invites defence. | A change of word alone changes little. | Public and non-profit settings. | Bryson (2018) |
| SOAR | Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results: what are we good at, and what do we want to achieve? | Positive, future-oriented, engages stakeholders through appreciative inquiry. | Can silence real weaknesses, conflicts and injustices. | Visioning with communities; building energy for change. | Stavros & Hinrichs (2009) |
| Asset mapping | Which skills, networks, places and institutions does a community already have? | Starts from what people have, not what they lack. | Can romanticise poverty and let the state off the hook. | Neighbourhood strategies; the empower quadrant. | Kretzmann & McKnight (1993) |
| Strategic choice approach | Which uncertainties block the decision: about the environment, about values, or about related decisions? | Makes uncertainty and value conflict explicit and manageable. | Needs facilitation and time. | Complex, multi-actor regional decisions. | Friend & Hickling (2005) |
| Scenario planning | How would the area fare in several plausible futures? | Corrects SWOT’s snapshot thinking; tests strategies for robustness. | Scenarios can become technocratic stories. | Long time horizons; climate, demography, energy. | Methods page |
| Collaborative SWOT | Whose strengths and threats? Where do readings conflict? | Keeps SWOT’s simplicity and adds voice, conflict and power. | Takes longer; needs real access to stakeholders or careful role-play. | Regional strategies in this course. | This page |
A two-hour team workshop
Run this with your Q3 group. When stakeholders cannot be present, each team member plays one, using interviews, documents and news sources to speak for them. Say clearly in your report which voices were real and which were role-played.
The test. Can a resident from the empower quadrant recognise their own reading of the area in your final SWOT? If not, it is still your SWOT, not theirs.
The texts behind this page
Bryson, J. M. (2004). What to do when stakeholders matter: Stakeholder identification and analysis techniques. Public Management Review, 6(1), 21–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719030410001675722
Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations (5th ed.). Wiley.
Dąbrowski, M. (2018). SWOT analysis [Lecture slides, AR2U088 Methodology for Urbanism]. Delft University of Technology.
Eden, C., & Ackermann, F. (1998). Making strategy: The journey of strategic management. Sage.
Friend, J., & Hickling, A. (2005). Planning under pressure: The strategic choice approach (3rd ed.). Elsevier.
Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative planning: Shaping places in fragmented societies. Macmillan.
Hill, T., & Westbrook, R. (1997). SWOT analysis: It’s time for a product recall. Long Range Planning, 30(1), 46–52.
Innes, J. E., & Booher, D. E. (2010). Planning with complexity: An introduction to collaborative rationality for public policy. Routledge.
Kearns, K. P. (1992). From comparative advantage to damage control: Clarifying strategic issues using SWOT analysis. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 3(1), 3–22.
Kraan, T. T., & Rooij, R. (n.d.). SWOT analysis [Urbanism method sheet]. Delft University of Technology. https://methodologyforurbanism.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/SWOT-ANALYSIS.pdf Accessed on: 16 October 2026.
Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. L. (1993). Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community’s assets. ACTA Publications.
Puyt, R. W., Lie, F. B., & Wilderom, C. P. M. (2023). The origins of SWOT analysis. Long Range Planning, 56(3), Article 102304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2023.102304
Rooij, R. M. (2003). Urban SWOT analysis [Teaching text, Spatial Planning and Strategy]. Delft University of Technology.
Schön, D. A., & Rein, M. (1994). Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. Basic Books.
Stavros, J. M., & Hinrichs, G. (2009). The thin book of SOAR: Building strengths-based strategy. Thin Book Publishing.
Weihrich, H. (1982). The TOWS matrix: A tool for situational analysis. Long Range Planning, 15(2), 54–66.