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Foundations Action Guide: Gap Analysis

By Georgina Donahue posted 07-11-2024 11:10 AM

  

Post-Foundations, it's time to apply class insights with our key tool: The Gap Analysis 

Why the Gap Analysis? 

This is the most important tool we teach – And it's crucial for bridging daily tasks with long-term goals. The Gap Analysis empowers you to: 

  • Clarify roles and responsibilities, ensuring everyone knows what's expected. 

  • Prioritize your activities, focusing on what drives meaningful progress. 

  • Assess performance objectively, identifying areas for immediate improvement. 

What to do now:  

First, explore the Gap Analysis tool independently, then conduct a collaborative session with stakeholders for collective completion (and buy-in!). The result? A map of high-impact activities.  

After, zero in on just three areas for immediate enhancement. It's about making impactful changes, not spreading yourself too thin. 

Tools for success:  

  • Template: Kickstart your gap analysis with a structured approach. 

  • Podcast with Instructor: Steve Gaylor talks about achieving organizational alignment through effective gap analysis. 

  • Peer Insights: Alumni offer strategies for maximizing your group's gap analysis exercise.  

This is your moment to bring the Pragmatic Framework to life in your daily work. We're here to support you every step of the way. 

2 comments
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Comments

Clarissa Mata
26 days ago

Here’s PAC-ready wording you can post on the Gap Analysis tool.

How I’ve used it

  • I used Gap Analysis to align our wellbeing initiative around who actually owns what work. We listed the key Pragmatic activities (e.g., Market Problems, Buyer Personas, Product Roadmap) and mapped each to a specific person and role using a simple RACI-style table from our project files.

How I made it more useful!

    • I turned the Gap Analysis into a working ceremony, not a one‑time document: we color‑coded boxes by confidence (green = solid, yellow = fuzzy, red = missing) and revisited it whenever we added a new deliverable or stakeholder. We did this in Miro as a group since we are in the middle of a product transformation and I wanted to help the team understand and get buy-in on the new responsibilities. 

Here’s where this helped me

  • When we kicked off my new initiative, there was a ton of enthusiasm but very fuzzy accountability around who defined success, who owned the member experience versus the underlying model, and who decided which legacy features to retire, so using Gap Analysis gave us a neutral way to expose those ownership gaps without blame, tighten roles across strategy, clinical, delivery, UX, behavioral science, and engineering, and right‑size the Q2 MVP so sprint readiness, stakeholder communication, and our conversations with leadership about risk and tradeoffs all became much more concrete

Madan Divaker
04-25-2026 11:45 AM

I have used the Gap Analysis tool across a few orgs now, and the value shows up fast. It forces the team to stop talking in generalities and actually map who owns what and where the real friction lives.  

The biggest win for me: it cuts through assumptions. Once the gaps are visible, prioritization becomes a lot cleaner because you’re aligning work to capability, not opinion.  

My tweak: run it twice - once with the product team, once with cross‑functional partners then compare the two versions. The delta tells you more than the exercise itself.  

Curious if others have tried multi‑team gap sessions and what surprised you most ?