Fit Gap Analysis: What It Is, Best Practices, and Templates

Peanut butter and jelly, fish and chips, wine and cheese – all these pairings are a perfect fit. And that’s what fit gap analysis essentially is: finding the ideal fit between your current situation and the outcome you’re striving for. After all, there’s always room for improvement, but which areas to fine-tune is often the real question to figure out.

This article will:

• Dive into a discovery of what fit gap analysis is and when to apply it.
• Learn how to perform fit gap analysis and the templates to use to help you out.
• The benefits and challenges associated with fit gap analysis and how to overcome those trials.

What is a Fit Gap Analysis?

There are two components to fit gap analysis, and those are the definition of the “fit” and “gap” in the name. Within product management, a “fit” is all about having existing product features match up perfectly with what your customers or the market are looking for. Got product features that fit? Congratulations – your product is hitting the mark!

On the opposite side of the spectrum, a “gap” means there’s a discrepancy between how your current product is doing and the results you desire. If you spot a gap, it means that there’s either a need for improvement or for a new feature to meet those expectations.

Not sure whether you’ve got any gaps in play? Fit gap analysis is a methodology made for this purpose – to pinpoint any gaps and understand the why behind them. It’s a structured approach for product managers to spot, quantify, and prioritize these gaps and then make a sound decision for what’s to come.

When to Use Fit Gap Analysis?

Fit gap analysis isn’t a one-trick pony. It can practically be used at any point of the product life cycle, from development all the way to after the product launch.

• Product Planning and Development – It’s easy to get overly committed to a product concept, which is why performing a fit gap analysis works so well at this stage of the process. It can help you find out whether or not your idea aligns with your audience’s needs and make sure you’re well-supported in every decision you make for your product.
• Market Research – Other than resonating with your audience, your product needs to have a market presence. A product without a calling doesn’t have a purpose. If there isn’t a gap there and it’s instead oversaturated with a bunch of products that aren’t serving a need, you might as well scrap your idea altogether.
• Product Launch – Launching a product into the ether is a big deal. It’s a representation of the hard work you’ve done over months or years and your anticipation for a return on investment. A fit gap analysis will act as that last line of defense to see if you’ve got areas to improve on or any cool opportunities you’ve missed out on.
• Product Iteration – As a product manager, you’re going to have to deal with product lifecycle after product lifecycle, and fit gap analysis is a useful recurring tool that’ll help you with any future efforts. Whether it’s tracking down changing market dynamics or navigating development efforts, you’ll have a much easier time refining your product.

How to Perform a Fit Gap Analysis

Performing a fit gap analysis is a lot like using any other evaluation tactic. It involves taking a look inward and assessing that information against the external – in this case, the market and the audience. At the same time, you’re also comparing the present and the future, meaning that you’re evaluating what’s happening now against what you want to happen later on and how to get there.

Here’s how you can do a fit gap analysis:

1. Figure Out Your Why – This type of analysis is incredibly versatile, so you need to start by narrowing down what you’re trying to get out of this process. Is it to verify a product concept, just a little feature, or vendor selection?
2. Find Out the Needs of Stakeholders and the Market – Fit gap analysis isn’t a solo process – it involves various stakeholders that you need to have a thorough understanding of, including fellow team members, customers, and competitors.
3. Assess Your Current Product or Process – Here’s where you dive deep into your current process or product to see just what it does and how it’s doing. You could use all sorts of tactics, like basic lists or comparison models, to note down features and functionalities.
4. List the Gaps - Now, it’s time to compare your insights from steps two and three. It’ll show you what requirements you’ve discovered and the capabilities you’ve got to meet them.
5. Prioritize Those Gaps – There’s often bound to be more than one gap in the mix, meaning you’ll need to assess their individual impact and prioritize them. Those that don’t require a large budget or a lot of time and effort to address are a good place to start, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t more significant gaps that require more money and more effort invested.
6. Develop a Plan of Action – Designing your action plan is a necessary process to prevent you from diving in head first without any direction. From timelines to milestones and responsibility allocation, you should make sure all bases are covered.
7. Take Action and Iterate – Carry out those action plans, but not without close monitoring or evaluation in play. This will ensure you tackle any issues as they come up and refine your fit gap analyses in the future.

Fit Gap Analysis Templates

Within fit gap analysis, there are three main templates that suit different circumstances. We’ll go over them in this section so you have a base to start with.

Process Gap Analysis

Finding that your business processes aren’t functioning as expected? A process gap analysis is the perfect template to visualize those gaps and all their details. 

In this example, a company may have identified some issues with lengthy development cycles and chosen to adopt agile methodologies to improve efficiency. They might have also realized that they could benefit from more detailed customer feedback, indicating an opportunity for advanced feedback tools.

System Gap Analysis

System gap analysis might initially seem similar to process gap analysis, but this analysis template is more focused on formal systems that foster productivity. 

Perhaps you’ve had customer complaints about order processing, and you find out that it’s to do with an overly complicated checkout process. This presents a good opportunity to use features like auto-fill and simplify the checkout process overall. An internet audit could indicate a need to refresh your inventory management, no thanks to delayed updates on stock levels. An ERP with real-time inventory tracking can reduce the chances of overselling or stockouts.

Resource Gap Analysis

The most future-oriented of the three is resource gap analysis, a preventative analysis method that looks at what resources are needed for future endeavors and what resources the business currently has available.

This template is most effective if your current resources aren’t sufficient enough for future projects. Findings may require you to hire new staff, provide extra training, increase your budget, or seek outside help.

Benefits of Fit Gap Analysis

Here’s why every product manager should use fit gap analysis: 

• Lessens Risk – You’ll get to address gaps in advance rather than launch products or features that don’t resonate with your audience.
• Improves Decision-Making – You get an instant understanding of any discrepancies between your current state and the outcomes you’re striving for so you can make better decisions throughout the product development process.
• Aligns Your Product with Market Needs – You’ll ensure your product is relevant and appealing.
• Optimizes Resource Use – You’re less likely to waste resources and more likely to maximize your ROI.
• Provides a Competitive Edge – You can not only meet market expectations but exceed them by spotting areas for opportunity.
• Fosters Continuous Improvement – You bring about a culture of continuous improvement, where you’re constantly growing and improving every step of the way.

Common Challenges and Strategies to Overcome Them

On the other side of the coin, things don’t always look so pretty. 

Scope creep is the most common challenge when dealing with fit gap analysis, which happens when your projects and initiatives expand and grow to the point where you lose focus. The best way to handle this problem is to articulate your objectives right from the get-go. Your scope needs to be limited and boundaries need to be set in place so things don’t go off the rails.

There’s also the potential issue of resource constraints, where time may not be on your side, insufficient budgets may hinder access to important tools and resources, and poor data quality might limit depth. This could mean you’d be left with rushed, shallow, inaccurate, and poor analyses. That’s why, other than optimizing where your resources actually go, external tools should be leveraged to streamline processes and external expertise should be capitalized on.

Finding Fit Gaps in Product Management

There’s a maze of challenges and decisions involved in product management, and fit gap analysis is the perfect map to guide you through them. It’s a shapeshifter that morphs to fit a variety of circumstances and the dynamic nature of the industry.

Such a versatile tactic requires an equally flexible platform like Fibery, where you can centralize your data, identify important insights, and develop and iterate the way you want. With a 14-day free trial, you can discover a new way to build and shape your product management journey with total freedom.