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How to measure success: Key performance indicators for consultants
Project Management 10 min read

How to measure success: Key performance indicators for consultants

Working in consultancy? Here’s how to take control of your KPIs.

Why Are We Stuck in a ‘Slice and Dice’ Mindset in Analytics?
Project Management 5 min read

Why Are We Stuck in a ‘Slice and Dice’ Mindset in Analytics?

Wrike’s Kirill Shmidt poses questions about the slice-and-dice method and A/B testing in the field of analytics.

How to Use the Fibonacci Scale in Agile Estimation
Project Management 7 min read

How to Use the Fibonacci Scale in Agile Estimation

The Fibonacci scale helps Agile teams estimate the time tasks should take. Learn more about Fibonacci in Agile and how you can apply it to your projects.

How to Carry Out a Requirements Analysis
Project Management 10 min read

How to Carry Out a Requirements Analysis

Requirements analysis is a key stage in any project. Here’s how the process works, from consulting stakeholders to creating a requirement analysis document.

Tips for Conducting a SWOT Analysis in Project Management
Project Management 7 min read

Tips for Conducting a SWOT Analysis in Project Management

How can SWOT analysis in project management help your next initiative? Learn more about the purpose of SWOT and how it can improve your projects today.

A Guide to PI Planning in Agile
Project Management 10 min read

A Guide to PI Planning in Agile

Discover the ultimate guide to PI planning in Agile and help your teams prioritize their work and use agile principles to deliver with speed and agility.

How To Use a Cumulative Flow Diagram
Project Management 7 min read

How To Use a Cumulative Flow Diagram

A cumulative flow diagram is a data visualization tool that shows how your team’s work process is running. Here’s what you need to know to use this diagram.

A Comprehensive Guide To Project Management Metrics
Project Management 7 min read

A Comprehensive Guide To Project Management Metrics

There are a great many ways of analyzing the performance of a project. Learn all about critical project management performance metrics and how to use them with Wrike.

How Big Data Gives You Smarter Insights
Leadership 3 min read

How Big Data Gives You Smarter Insights

As someone once said, the problem with Big Data is that it's... well, BIG. Long before the term exploded into the vocabulary of the general public in mid-2011, industries everywhere have delighted in the fact that Big Data can provide them with much-needed insight. By looking for Big Data both internally and externally, organizations can gain the intelligence needed to become more responsive to customer needs, stand out from their competition, and ultimately, be more profitable. Here's a quick look at the four qualities of Big Data that make it a unique tool for generating actionable business insight: Volume: Why Big Data is Big Everyday, people are spending huge chunks of time working and socializing in the digital world, which generates an enormous amount of data. According to a 2014 infographic by DOMO, every minute there are 277,000 tweets posted to Twitter, 216,000 photos uploaded to Instagram, and 8,333 videos shared on Vine. Now imagine being able to tap into all of that social activity to identify how consumers are finding your website online, or how much time they spend using your SaaS tool on a weekday. That's what Big Data is about — allowing users to access this mind-boggling volume of information and then process it in order to pinpoint actionable items. Variety: Handling Structured and Unstructured Data Generally, structured data is information that's highly organized and easy to search using straightforward search engine algorithms. A concrete example would be spreadsheets — information is presented in columns and rows, making it easy to search and sort. Unstructured data, on the other hand, is the opposite. It usually consists of human-generated and people-oriented content that may not fit neatly into database tables. The best example of unstructured data: email. Let's face it, information in email is chaotic. If you had to force all the data in your inbox into the grids of a spreadsheet, you'd soon understand the problem. And yet, Big Data can do so much more using both structured and unstructured data. There are newer, better machine learning algorithms that can differentiate signal from noise. Look at Google Flu Trends, which is able to predict the number of flu cases in a certain country based on search data surrounding keywords such as "flu," as opposed to relying directly on health reports. It's one example of how Big Data can parse even unstructured data (e.g. web searches), resulting in a useful tool. Velocity: Delivering Insights in a Snap Moore's Law states that the overall processing power of computers doubles every two years. As technology's capacity grows exponentially, it allows Big Data to deliver insight to its users at a greater velocity. Data is generated in real time, so users can demand actionable information in real time. A decade ago, this would have been impossible. But today, it's a reality that is opening new doors. Value: The Goal is Intelligence All this comes back to the fact no organization collects data just for the sake of having data. They're doing it to derive actionable insight. This is the value you want to extract. And it will only happen if all three previous V's are addressed in equal measure: volume, variety, and velocity. How has Big Data helped you and your organization? Hit the comments and tell us.

Meet Wrike Analyze: Bringing Business Intelligence Into Wrike
News 3 min read

Meet Wrike Analyze: Bringing Business Intelligence Into Wrike

What if there was a reporting option as powerful as a BI tool but more accessible to business users and already built into your collaborative work management software? Meet Wrike Analyze: advanced reports and analytics easily accessible within Wrike. Read to learn more of its features!

Critical Path Analysis in Wrike: Adjust Project Schedules Without Delaying Results
News 3 min read

Critical Path Analysis in Wrike: Adjust Project Schedules Without Delaying Results

You created a perfect project plan but then... one of your tasks took longer than expected, a new assignment came out of the blue, and one of the key team members took several days off for a sick child. Don't let unexpected events frustrate you: the brand-new Critical Path analysis view addresses all these issues. Now when something gets in your team's way, you can instantly see what project schedule alterations can be made without delaying milestones or missing deadlines.   This new Enterprise feature, which was hotly requested by users, displays the longest chain of dependent tasks in your project folder on the Timeline view. This view allows you to focus on the vital string of events that must be accomplished to stay on track. Once you review your critical path, you can regroup your resources to get those main tasks done, and reschedule nonessential work that is getting in the way of hitting your project milestone date on time. Now that Wrike possesses Critical Path, it should make the migration from MS Project even easier. Critical path analysis is a project management method that creates the shortest timeline for your project by considering the tasks required to complete the deliverable, along with time estimates for each step, task dependencies, and final milestones. This methodology helps you intelligently plan every project.   You may be wondering how to calculate critical path for your projects. To use our new feature, go to your Timeline view and tick the "Critical Path" radio button at the top of your workspace. This feature is available for Enterprise accounts. Now that it's live in your workspace, we'd love to get your feedback on it. Hit the comments and tell us what you think!

3 Kinds of Data To Help Avoid Project Management Failure
Project Management 5 min read

3 Kinds of Data To Help Avoid Project Management Failure

Our friends over at TechnologyAdvice spend a lot of time gathering the best tech advice for you to improve your work performance. This guest post from one of their writers, Christopher Herbert, tells you the three things you need to take your projects down the road to success. A project’s success or failure is judged by its adherence to the guidelines established when it began. This is both typical and reasonable, but only if those guidelines are well constructed and attainable. Often, an executive declares a project a failure based on the failure to operate within the allotted budget, failure to complete on time, or failure to produce a product of high enough quality. But such a judgment can be complicated. A project within its budget but failing to meet all the stakeholder’s ever-shifting needs may be considered a failure, while an ambitious project may go way over budget but still be considered a success because at least it was properly completed. These subjective definitions of failure reveal that the measurement of a project’s success is not always about delivery, but about perception. If the project guidelines can be better defined before it starts, it has a greater likelihood of achieving success. Data can improve these expectations. Data about past projects can help you set appropriate, attainable goals, and inform you as to how much of the unexpected should actually be expected. 1. Planned Versus Actual Start/End Dates for Similar Projects This data point requires that you’ve performed projects of this kind before. Simply collecting the actual start dates and actual end dates of previous projects (not the “projected” dates) will give you an average time-to-completion estimate, as well as high and low possibilities. For further predictive accuracy, find the number of work days between those two dates, accounting for holidays, corporate training days, employee PTO vacation days, and unexpected sick days. Then find the number of problems faced, how long it took to address them, the number of adjustments made to the original plan, and time lost due to plan adjustments. Much of this data may not be included in the official report, so it may require digging through emails, records in your project management tool, meeting minutes, or questioning those involved. Use this data to compare with the holidays, corporate training, PTO days, etc. that are planned to occur within the timespan of your upcoming project. Throw in the average unexpected setbacks that occurred in each previous project. This estimate, being based on previous experiences, has a higher likelihood of accuracy than a gut instinct, or even average project time. It may also be more convincing when attempting to explain why a project will simply take longer to complete than the executives would like. 2. Project Team Productivity Data This data point does not require prior projects of its kind per se, but it does require that you have some sort of data on individual employee productivity for similar tasks to those required by the current project. This requires a certain degree of willingness from your staff to either allow the monitoring - or participate in the monitoring - of how long it takes them to accomplish certain tasks. Ideally, this would be more than just a generalized, “It takes me two hours to do this.” Rather, it needs to be consistent, non-intrusive observations of the rate of task completion (such as noting each time an item is completed). Whether its measured in words per minute, lines of code per hour, or pots painted per day, this data can be used to create average productivity estimates, as well as minimum and maximum productivity levels. Once you’ve identified a realistic rate of production, you can either use that information to calculate team progress manually or with the help of project management software. Many PM applications allow you to assign tasks to a team of workers. With productivity data for each team member already entered, the software will give you an estimated completion time for the entire project. This allows you to estimate time-to-completion of a team’s assignments based on of the cumulative productivity of each employee, with data to back it up. One thing to be wary of is that many employees are uncomfortable with particularly detailed monitoring of their task progress. Assure them that the monitoring is purely for the sake of setting reasonable goals on future projects, which in turn will lead to higher success rates, and fewer project cancellations. 3. Resources and Materials Consumption Data Material consumption is some of the easiest data to find accurate values for, and can save you serious money. Analyzing the relationship between the amount of materials anticipated, requested, used, and leftover from previous projects should help you better calculate the amount required for your upcoming project. Similarly, quality assurance data on the frequency of defective products will help you anticipate the cost and delay of making up for imperfections. Aside from the materials alone, entire budgets of prior projects can be broken down and analyzed to find which areas frequently overspend, and therefore which areas need to be better planned for. Whether that be a particular resource, labor, or tool, it’s likely to go over budget again, unless real changes were made. All of this data collection is purely for the purpose of improving your project’s expectations beforehand. It’s the difference between simply picturing a finished bridge or piece of software in three months, and actually calculating out the time it will take for each team to perform their tasks based on numbers from their previous performances. Which method would you use to determine a project’s eventual success or failure?

Why Is a Business Impact Analysis Important in Project Management?
Project Management 7 min read

Why Is a Business Impact Analysis Important in Project Management?

A business impact analysis will identify and outline the costs of business or project disruption. Create an effective project impact assessment with Wrike today.

What is a Milestone Trend Analysis
Project Management 5 min read

What is a Milestone Trend Analysis

Milestone trend analysis in project management can reveal whether a project is on track or at risk of delay. Find bottlenecks and get back on track with Wrike.

How to Do a Cost Benefits Analysis in Project Management
Project Management 7 min read

How to Do a Cost Benefits Analysis in Project Management

Follow these cost benefit analysis steps and learn how to do a cost benefit analysis in order to make informed business decisions about projects and investments.

How to Create a Lean Canvas Model (Template)
Leadership 10 min read

How to Create a Lean Canvas Model (Template)

According to the Harvard Business Review, many startups fail because they waste resources building the wrong product and neglecting customer research. This is typically the result of a lack of proper problem understanding at the start. That’s where the lean canvas model comes in.  Traditionally, business plans are long documents that take weeks (or more) to create. They provide every single detail business owners can think of about the ins and outs of their idea. Not only is this process tedious, but the result is too dense to truly understand in any actionable way.  The lean canvas model was created in response to these issues. This strategically simple tool distills the most critical factors of your business into a meaningful outline. In this guide on creating a lean canvas model, we’ll show you how to maximize its effectiveness while answering all of your most frequently asked questions about the topic.  What is a lean canvas model? A lean canvas model is a lean project management tool that helps you deconstruct your business idea into its key assumptions. It was originally created by Ash Maurya in response to the Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder.  The Business Model Canvas The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is becoming more prevalent within large enterprises. It’s helping product managers develop compelling business cases for new products and services. And it makes sense why; the BMC is a powerful tool that helps visualize and evaluate the viability of an idea. The BMC takes you back to a time when you were thinking about a business instead of just a product or a proposition. One of the main reasons organizations use the BMC is because it enables them to connect with their business stakeholders in a way that's both productive and user-friendly. The Lean Canvas Model The lean canvas model, on the other hand, is a conceptual framework that is used to test various parts of the business model. On the lean canvas model, boxes represent key attributes or actions required to improve project management status or business process. The driving concept of the lean canvas is that it can help you identify the customer problem-focused areas of your business and develop solutions to address them.  Getting to know your unfair advantage can also help identify areas where you can improve upon. This step is unique to the lean canvas model, helping business leaders and managers develop a more robust business model overall.  Business Model vs. Lean Model Both the BMC and the lean canvas model provide the same benefits and opportunities. That is, to represent a business model on one page.  But what makes the lean canvas model so unique is that it can serve as a tool for all of the following:  Coming up with new ideas Determining viability  Confirming or dismantling assumptions Encouraging feedback and conversation Comparing multiple ideas side by side Raising funds Communicating clearly with teams Offering nontechnical explanations of products and services Could a lean canvas model help your business? You might think that having a sea of numbers is helpful, but it can also lead to the confusion of identifying the right key macro or action steps. This single-page business model is quick and straightforward to complete. Because it is on the shorter side, it is easier to share with others. You can also combine it with an OKR (Objects and Key Results) template or any other business model summarization tool.  Another benefit is that teams companywide can treat it as a living document and update it accordingly. This is especially useful when teams are looking to cut waste wherever possible. And if you need to create a few different options, it won’t take a long time to draft and compare.  To write a successful lean canvas model, your draft needs to grab attention, cut the fat, and highlight only the most important elements of your business. Once complete, business leaders can use this document to persuade investors, give board presentations, and update teammates with ease.  Another common use for the lean canvas model is to create a visual representation of a startup business model. Entrepreneurs will then get feedback and polish their pitches using this tool as a jumping-off point.  If any of these benefits sound appealing to you, then the lean canvas model combined with a lean project management approach will help your business.  Lean canvas model example and template To better understand the power of a lean canvas model, let’s take a close look at this lean canvas model from Google that executives presumably created 20+ years ago.  Google is the world’s most popular search engine. Everyone has heard the story of how it was started in a garage in California and that it has since grown into a multinational company that specializes in various products and services.  Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were inspired by the need for a better search engine but they needed to come up with a way to translate that idea into an actionable concept. That's when they invented the PageRank algorithm, which is now used by millions of websites globally.  Here’s an example of the lean canvas model they used to visualize their idea:  Problem: Existing search engines produce irrelevant search results making it difficult to find high-quality answers to queries.  Existing alternatives: AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite Solution: Develop a technology that would allow users to search and find relevant content.  Key metrics: Number of search requests and percent of users who end their search on the first page.  Unique value proposition: Faster search with better results High-level concept: Fast web search based on the relevancy of results Unfair advantage: Innovation. Google PageRank technology.  Channels: User references. Note: This box has since become the Customer Relationships segment Customer segments: All web users Early adopters: Stanford students Cost structure: Hosting, development Revenue streams: Investment, ad revenue Notice how they were able to capture the entire essence of Google as we know it today in only 100 words? While your lean canvas model doesn’t have to adhere to a certain word count, this example showcases just how succinct you can be.  Most answers to segments are bullet points and incomplete sentences. But they directly address the category and give the reader the need-to-know information.  Not only is this lean canvas model example easy to understand, but it’s also easy to connect the dots between where they started and where they’re going. Now, decades later, the entire world knows what Google is and what they do.  Plus, they’ve kept the promises they laid out in their original lean canvas model.  Lean canvas model segments explained Problem Understand what, exactly, your product is trying to solve. Most founders start with their idea for a solution without really taking the time to understand this section.  Existing alternatives Research what your target audience who experiences this problem currently uses to solve it. List 3-5 of the top options they currently have.  Solution Describe what your product is and how it fixes the problem in a sentence.  Key metrics List key performance indicators that you’ll use to determine whether or not your solution is the best. These should be simple and straightforward. They should also be attainable.  Unique value proposition What does your solution bring to the table that the alternatives currently do not?  High-level concept Think of this as your 8-second elevator pitch. Focus on the what and the why.  Unfair advantage This is, quite literally, what your product is unfairly good at. Ideally, it will be something competitors cannot replicate or, if they can, their results will likely be of lower quality. Lean canvas model creator Ash Maurya wants entrepreneurs to know that this step is not meant to trip you up and it definitely shouldn’t slow down your progress on this exercise. The goal of this box is to encourage you to keep working towards finding an unfair advantage in the marketplace. It is inevitable that a startup will get caught up in the fast-moving world of competition. So don’t worry if you’re feeling uninspired. Write what makes the most sense to you now and come back to it later once you have more experience, feedback, and industry knowledge.  Customer relationships Identify the right path to reach your ideal customers so you can guarantee you’re building a solution they actually want to use.  Customer segments Who will use your product? Point out one or two major groups.  Early adopters For Google, this was a group of students they had access to for direct product feedback. For you, this will be anyone outside of your organization who will first have access to your solution.  Cost structure Outline your top biggest expenses besides the obvious general office supplies. If you need to cut costs later, you can keep these core elements and decrease the rest.  Revenue streams How will your product make money? List one to three ways you can prove that the product will create opportunities for revenue growth.  What is a lean product canvas, and when should you use one? A lean product canvas is the same as a lean canvas model, except that it focuses on a product rather than a service or way of running your business. You should use a lean product canvas whenever you need to illustrate your idea for a new product, a product upgrade, or a third-party product collaboration. In other words, if you need a tool to communicate your business idea to anyone, this is a great option.  Do I need a business model canvas? The business model canvas is a simple formula that will help improve the focus and clarity of your business. If you’ve ever found yourself in need of sharing a new business venture idea, working out the details for an existing one, or pitching for funding, then this is the tool for you.  Not only is it free and simple to use, but it’s also highly accessible. Wrike has created a lean model canvas template you can take advantage of when you begin your two-week free trial. Streamline your business model, get better quality feedback, and raise seed funding through a lean canvas model you make with Wrike. 

How to Create a Business Model Canvas (With Template)
Leadership 10 min read

How to Create a Business Model Canvas (With Template)

Do you want to create a simple business plan? Something comprehensive, flexible, and easy to scribble on a napkin? You can do that with a business model canvas. Every business has ever-changing, diverse interests. Illustrating all of this on a single sheet of paper may sound challenging — but by using a business model canvas template, your team can focus on the key elements of your business to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. Business model canvas explained "Lengthy business plans often increase the risk of failure," wrote Alex Osterwalder in his 2008 book “Business Model Generation.” The business model canvas offers a way to avoid this, providing a simplified version of a business plan. A business model canvas is a simple, visual framework that helps teams outline the most fundamental elements of a business. As a handy business tool, teams can use a business model canvas to map the nine core areas of a business, such as customer needs, value proposition, and platforms for customer acquisition. This article will explain the business model canvas, its benefits, and how it can help your team develop a successful high-level business strategy and actionable roadmap. How can a business model canvas help your business? Many teams are so overwhelmed with operational issues that they don’t have time to focus on the core business strategy. Utilizing the business model canvas helps create a unified framework that depicts this strategy alongside an action plan that teams can follow. But how do you know if you need a business model canvas? If you are starting a business or even toying with an idea, a BMC can create a powerful visual representation of your concept. A business model canvas can also be a handy reference for your team as they move towards successful business outcomes. Here are five more ways in which a business model canvas can help your company. It’s simple and easy to follow Whether you have a business idea or are managing a large enterprise, having an easy-to-follow business plan can be immensely helpful. As a precise one-page document, teams can modify specific business model canvas elements as they go along without completely redoing a 50- or 100-page document. Focused on being actionable  Every business plan needs to be actionable. Using a business model canvas helps you accurately define your organization’s core value proposition and keep it aligned to your business strategy. Your focus could be to achieve profitability in the first year or gain a large market share. Stay competitive by defining actionable steps for your team within the business model canvas. Flexible and scalable as the business evolves  No business stays the same forever but evolves as it interacts with diverse market dynamics, competitors, product innovations, and changing consumer needs. To take your idea to market, you need a tool that connects the dots between what your customers want, your business's unique offering, and the desired profitability streams. By creating a business model canvas template, you instantly get an edge over other market players engrossed in lengthy business plan documents. [caption id="attachment_464973" align="alignnone" width="753"] Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash[/caption] Puts the customer first Ignoring customers sets businesses up for failure. Companies flounder if they direct their energies solely towards making a great product or service. With a business model canvas template, your focus stays on the ultimate end-users of your product.  Having a business blueprint will force team members to think about what customers want, the primary issues they need help with, and how your product or service can do that.  Helps get team and executive buy-in 23% of businesses fail without the right team on their side. Every company needs team members with a diverse mix of skills, experiences, and talents. Companies require a solid business blueprint for hiring team members or bringing in investors. Having a business model canvas can help get everyone on board with your organization’s core vision. Potential employees and investors can visualize how the different organizational parts interact and see how they can become an integral part of the company. Promotes focus on the unique value proposition of your business 19% of companies fail due to being outperformed by their competitors. If there's no difference between your product and one from another firm, why should customers come to your company? Every business needs a clear value proposition that helps them stand out — that's where a business model canvas template comes in. When you look at the nine core elements of a business model canvas (explained below), you'll quickly notice some factors are controllable to a certain extent, while others are more fractious. Your company's core value proposition sits right in the middle. It acts as the central pillar around which all other elements exist, defining the fundamental nature of the business. What goes into each segment? To fill out a business model canvas, you should know what goes into each of the nine fundamental segments. Have a business model canvas template ready before you and your team start brainstorming on each of these elements (you'll find one below) and then add the research and data into the relevant sections.  Customer segments In this fundamental business area, teams identify the core individuals they will help with their product or service. To do this, they create two to three buyer personas — potential customers that a business seeks to serve. A buyer persona is a simple but detailed description of a prospective business customer. It assists with capturing the customer’s real-life problems and motivations, helping the business deliver what they want. Value proposition The value proposition is the ultimate value that a customer will get from your product or service. It seeks to answer the question, “Why will a customer buy?” Here are a few popular value propositions for any organization: Customization ability Unique product design Innovation in product or service Exceptional service or product status Affordable pricing and clear pricing model definition Channels In a business model canvas, channels are the platforms through which a company sells its product or service to end-users. To identify the best channel for your business, look at how you plan to connect with your customers. A few possible channels can be: A self-owned retail store A website Direct sales staff Affiliate marketing platforms Google Adsense Facebook A business can either own its channels or partner with other companies that have their own channels. Customer relationships Customer relationships in a business model canvas define how the company will obtain, retain, and increase new customers. Let's take a look at how customer relationships are built: Identify how to obtain customers and from which platforms (e.g., Google, Facebook ads) Gain clarity on how to retain existing customers using different techniques (e.g., exceptional customer service) Discover how to increase the customer base of the business (e.g., sending text or email notifications to prompt website visits) Revenue streams Revenue streams help the business owner decide how to generate revenue and achieve their predefined organizational goals. Key decisions with revenue streams include: Choosing from a one-time payment model or monthly subscriptions Keeping a free plus paid model or a wholly paid product or service with a free trial How payment from customers will be received — website payments, PayPal, or in-store Key resources Key resources in your business model canvas represent the assets that are vital to your company’s operation. Business assets can include anything from the below categories: Physical assets, including machines, buildings, IT hardware, and vehicles Intellectual assets, including patents, copyrights, partnerships, brands, and employee skills Human assets, including talented employees in knowledge industries such as IT, law, and content marketing Financial assets, like cash balances in the bank or lines of credit Key activities Want to make your business canvas model work? Make sure to list the key activities that will help expand the business's core value proposition. Key activities can come from any of the below categories: Production: How you will deliver your end product to the customers. You may need to order more stock or upgrade materials Platform: For example, the software used to sell your product, which may require upgrades or maintenance Problem-solving: For example, designing innovative solutions for issues that your customers face Key partners Every business has some non-core activities that should preferably be outsourced. Key partners are the companies or individuals that complete these non-core activities. Take a company like Facebook, for example — its key activity is to upgrade and maintain its platform. It doesn't create its own ads, so it also needs to strike deals with companies that wish to advertise on its platform.  Similarly, it doesn’t create its content — the users do. The primary reasons for choosing key partners can be: Achieving economies of scale Mitigating risk and unpredictability in business Acquiring resources and advertisements for its business (e.g., ads for Facebook) Cost structure Once the key activities are outlined on the business model canvas, it's time to assign cost structures. Be clear and precise with the estimated business costs of the planned activities to ensure you reach your profitability goal. Business model canvas example and template It can be helpful to see a business model canvas in action to understand its application in real-life situations. In this example, the nine elements of the business canvas model are being applied to Facebook’s business: Customer segments: Facebook's customers can be divided into two distinct categories — advertisers and platform users Value proposition: The primary reasons platform users come to Facebook. Users feel connected to friends and families, while companies get more leads through advertising on the platform Channels: The website where all data is stored Customer relationships: Facebook incentivizes users to stay on the platform through notifications and new features, leading more companies to advertise on it Revenue streams: Facebook earns money through advertising, while companies gain new customers from Facebook ads Key resources: Facebook's key resources are its platforms — Facebook.com, the Messenger application, and Facebook Ads Manager for advertisers Key activities: Maintaining the website and its infrastructure are two of Facebook’s key strategic activities Key partnerships: Facebook's key partners are its users and advertisers Cost structures: Major costs incurred by Facebook include managing the software, backend engineering operations, product development, regular operations, and staff salaries How to create a business model canvas (with template) Ready to create your business model canvas? Before you begin, take some time to brainstorm answers to these questions related to the nine core fundamental areas of the canvas. Here's a simple business model canvas template exercise that can help your team get started. Customer segments: Can you identify your potential customers? Channels: Once the product or service is ready, how will customers discover it? Key partnerships: Can any non-core business activities be outsourced? Customer relationships: How will your business generate leads and retain and increase your customer base? Cost structures: Can the business classify its main costs and expenses into fixed and variable? Is there a way to align costs with the core value proposition and planned revenues? Revenue streams: Has the business decided on a profit margin? How will it make money? Key resources: Which core resources are critical for the business to succeed? Value proposition: Why will customers choose your business? Does the company satisfy any particular need with its product or service? Key activities: Are there any activities that help your business deliver its unique value proposition to customers? Do I need a lean model canvas?  If your business is still an idea or in its infancy, choosing a lean model canvas makes more sense. Inspired by the business model canvas, the lean model canvas was created by Ash Maurya. It is a one-page business plan template that distills the lean startup methodology into the original business model canvas.  Lean model canvas assimilates multiple essential data points to develop a simpler, start-up optimized version of a business model canvas. It adds four more building blocks to the business model canvas, namely: Problem: Identify the problem faced by the customer and focus on solving it Solution: Start with a minimum viable product that helps solve the customer problem effectively Unfair advantage: List the barriers to entry in a specific sector and your company’s competitive advantages Key metrics: Focus on one goal at one time to ensure you’re doing a good job Lean model canvas drops four elements from the original business model canvas — key partners, key activities, key resources, and customer relationships.  While the original illustrates a more comprehensive business approach, the lean model canvas has a sharper customer orientation. Many start-ups prefer the lean model canvas to a traditional business plan for building an actionable roadmap. The lean model canvas is a great fit for younger companies or those working with a tight time frame or budget to market with a more targeted problem resolution approach. Why you should use Wrike to build a business model canvas  The business model canvas’ nine building blocks clearly illustrate the core business areas and their interrelationships. Whether you're trying to figure out the model for a company with three employees or 50,000, a business model canvas can be very useful. Begin by mapping out the most crucial information about your business, then link the blocks to ensure every value proposition is linked to a revenue stream and a specific customer segment. Using Wrike to build your business model canvas template, you can iterate faster, communicate with ease, and enable organization-wide success. With a centralized hub, your teams can configure custom dashboards easily and produce better quality work using premade templates. Implement what you've learned about the business model canvas by trying out a free two-week trial of Wrike today.

The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Modeling
Project Management 10 min read

The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Modeling

Struggling to optimize your business processes? Find out process modeling benefits and techniques for executing business process modeling projects successfully.

What Is Business Forecasting? Why It Matters
Project Management 10 min read

What Is Business Forecasting? Why It Matters

What is business forecasting? Forecasting helps organizations strategize and, when done right, can give you a competitive advantage. Read on to learn more.

What Is a Critical Path Analysis?
Project Management 5 min read

What Is a Critical Path Analysis?

In project management critical path analysis helps PMs determine project dependencies and deadlines. Learn more about critical path analysis tools with Wrike.

What Is a PMO Maturity Model?
Project Management 10 min read

What Is a PMO Maturity Model?

What is a PMO maturity model and why and how should your team use one? In this guide, we dive into what you need to know about PMO maturity models.

How to Leverage Team Data for Big Projects
Project Management 7 min read

How to Leverage Team Data for Big Projects

Big data in project management helps leaders make informed decisions. Find out how to leverage your team data to help streamline and propel some of your biggest projects.

Root Cause Analysis: Definition, Benefits, and Templates
Productivity 10 min read

Root Cause Analysis: Definition, Benefits, and Templates

What is root cause analysis? Discover how to use root cause analysis tools to find and address major roadblocks and achieve stronger outcomes.

Introducing the 5 Whys Technique of Problem Solving
Project Management 5 min read

Introducing the 5 Whys Technique of Problem Solving

The five whys technique is a problem-solving method that helps you get to the root cause of a problem. Here’s how to use it to benefit your projects.