STEEPLE has overlaps with other analysis frameworks like PESTLE, PEST and STEEP. STEEPLE has become more popular of late due to the emphasis on “Ethical” which other frameworks do not cover explicitly.
What does STEEPLE stand for?
S: Social T: Technological E: Economic E: Environmental P: Political L: Legal E: Ethical
How do I do a STEEPLE analysis?
The standard approach is to run through each area of STEEPLE, and examine external factors that are relevant to your product or service. Each factor can be an opportunity or a threat. Prioritise these factors, and work out an action plan to address each opportunity or threat.
What is STEEPLE analysis used for?
STEEPLE analysis is used to discover and act on the external factors that might effect the success of your business. It is a list of areas to work through so and identify opportunities and threats, so that you can make plans accordingly.
How do I do a STEEPLE analysis workshop?
1. Get your team together: Assemble your team, and if you can, include some impartial, trusted colleagues from other businesses. 2. Explain the purpose: To brainstorm and then prioritise actions relating to external factors, in order to maximise product success. 3. Brainstorm STEEPLE: Use a STEEPLE cheat sheet to prompt the team. Run through each area – S, T, E, E, P, L, E – recording threats and opportunities. 4. Prioritise: Arrange the factors from the brainstorm into the ones that the team feel are a) most impactful, and b) are most likely to materialise. 5. Take action: Plan and delegate actions to mitigate the threats and to exploit the opportunities for each prioritised item.
When should I use a STEEPLE analysis?
A STEEPLE analysis is most useful to generate a thorough view of external factors when you are planning to take a new product to market. It can also be used at any time to refresh your plans relating to external factors, as the world is constantly changing around us.
Is STEEPLE analysis better than PESTLE?
STEEPLE follows the same principles as PESTLE (also called “PESTEL”), with the addition of “Ethical” factors. So while STEEPLE is not “better”, it has become more appealing in the 2020s.
While many people might raise risks around holding Hackathon events, there are significant benefits, and this is reflected in the growing popularity of the hack day format.
What are the benefits of running a Hackathon Event?
1. Create and test ideas rapidly: Prove good ideas quickly, and reduce the cost of failure by closing bad ideas quickly. 2. Increase collaboration: Encourage cross-functional and cross-team collaboration. The rapid iteration is very efficient and intense. 3. Generate excitement: Participants explore adventurous ideas in an exciting and safe environment, where it is ok to try crazy tangents. 4. Boost talent attraction and retention: Generate PR buzz in the community, and improve staff morale. 5. Generate a competitive advantage: Boost your overall productivity with this lean approach to ideation.
What are the benefits of running an in-house Hack Day?
1. Boost cross-department collaboration and community. 2. Generate new ideas or solve challenges rapidly. 3. Close down bad ideas quickly – i.e. “fail fast” so that your organisation saves resources. 4. Improve staff morale. 5. Contribute to a more enjoyable working mix.
What are the benefits of running an industry or sector Hackathon?
1. Encourage new open standards. 2. Share solutions to common problems. 3. Raise the profile and stature of your organisation. 4. Improve your staff morale. 5. Generate a stronger, more innovative community.
What are the common arguments against Hackathon events?
1. “No actionable ideas ever come out of Hackathons.” 2. “People might steal ideas from one another.” 3. “Why should we help the competition?”
What are the top elements that make Hackathons go well?
1. A simple, open challenge to excite everyone: “How might we … ?” 2. Slick and timely event management: Good resources, great MC, help, support, hot food and good coffee & refreshments. 3. Pre-formed teams: Encourage people to make teams before the event. 4. Maximize the Hack Time: Get started quickly and do not force people to sit through sponsors’ presentations. Get in, kick off, Hack!! 5. A great venue in a great location: Make it inspiring, bright, with fun stuff nearby for the evening. 6. Short demos and good prizes: Well organised demos, slick AV management, fun judges, and prizes with humorous categories.
Traffic lights are useful RAG graphics if you have just one or two statuses to report. If you want to show more, LED lights can be used. Dials are useful RAG status indicators if you want to show e.g. where in “Green” your green status currently is; i.e. Is it very green?.. or is it nearly amber?
What are the different RAG status traffic lights?
You can use the Red Amber Green of traffic lights in different graphic styles: USA traffic lights, UK traffic lights, New York style traffic lights, or just a plain generic style.
UK and USA Traffic Light styles
Use these striking UK and USA styles to bring your presentation alive. Many people make the mistake of using simplistic graphics (three circles in a rectangle) which can be so boring!
Add spice to your presentation with authentic, clear graphics.
PESTEL is a framework for exploring important external factors surrounding a project or product. It is a checklist that helps you remember what to explore in your external business environment to inform your actions, and to maximise your chances of success.
What does PESTLE stand for?
It stands for these common factors that affect products and projects: Political. Economic. Social. Technological. Legal. Environmental.
Why use PESTLE?
Use PESTLE to help you remember which factors to explore, whilst planning your project or product.
It should be used during project and product planning, when plans and strategy are being set. It can be used to identify your RAID items (RAID = risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies) for risk management, and also to inform strategic plans.
What are the problems with PESTLE?
Most problems with PESTLE arise when you rely on it alone for your planning. You need to use other tools too! Common issues:- 1. It does not give you the full picture on its own. 2. Life changes, so it needs to be updated. 3. It can be over-simplified. 4. It requires a lot of research to identify all factors. 5. It can be quite time intensive.
Start with a clean landscape-oriented page, and put your strategy title at the top.
Landscape format helps you show the timeline that we will get to later.
Put in swim lanes for Business Change, KPI and Initiatives.
These three areas work well: – Business Change: be clear about what is changing. – KPI: how we are going to ensure the change is on track. – Initiatives: what are the important projects that will drive the strategic change?
Add lines for KPIs, and Strategic Initiatives.
These lines will allow us to plot important messages over time in each strategic area. In the KPIs, use one to three areas. In the initiatives, not more than five areas,
Add your timeline to clearly show the duration and phasing.
The timeline needs to be clear, with some gridlines, so that your audience can easily see *when* things need to happen.
Set the strategic starting state: Where are you now?
This is crucial – you must articulate, in simple terms, the starting state so that your audience can understand the journey.
Define the target state: What is the inspirational goal?
The target state is arguably the most important part of your strategic plan – the inspirational target that everyone sets their sights on.
Define the “phases” of the strategic change.
Strategic change plans usually include more than one “phase”. Arrange the phases in your “business change” swim lane, to set the scene for the rest of the plan diagram. Two or three phases is ideal.
Add the important projects within each strategic initiative.
Be careful!! Do not add too much detail here; try and line these up with the “phases” in step 7. Aim for one or a maximum of two items per phase in each strategic initiative swim lane.
Add baselines and checkpoints to the KPI streams.
Putting in baselines and KPI checkpoints allows you to show a simple way to measure the success of the strategic plan rollout.
Add important context notes for each initiative.
Your audience will have interests in one or more of the initiatives. This is a way to add more contextual information to bring your initiatives alive.
Add RAG status for each project to show risk levels.
And finally – give your audience a sense of where the risk lies in the strategic plan. This helps everyone prepare for the upcoming strategic rollout.
Suppliers performance measurement boils down to 3 key areas: Time, Cost and Quality.
Time
How quickly does the supplier perform the task you are asking of it? It can often get confusing with different terminology such as Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and Service Level Agreements (SLA’s), especially as the two often overlap. An SLA is the contractual obligation that supplier has to you. A KPI is usually an indicator of performance. Away from actual service delivery, how quickly does your supplier respond to requests you may have? If you need extra information is it hours or months to get a response? Another factor is does the supplier cause your operational teams extra work?
Cost
How much does the product or service cost? Does it represent value? But it’s not just the cost of the product – you need to look at the wider costs. Does a small change request always have a charge? Is the product cheap but cost you in compensation or returns? Does working with the supplier mean you have to change how you usually work? And does that cost money too? Known as the landed cost (all costs combined) it is important to see the whole picture.
Quality
In its simplest form, how good is the product or the service? Does it make you look better as a business or conversely does it harm your reputation? Do customers flood back to you because it is so good or complain all the time?
For further information on supply chain management, seer our Supply Chain Management section.
