Competitive Analysis Process

A community skill from Dean Peters' Product Manager Skills library. It runs a full competitive analysis as six steps, each grounded in a named strategy framework, and ends with the outputs teams actually use: battle cards, a comparison matrix, positioning counter-moves and a threat assessment. What it walks you through - Scope: the decision the analysis supports (a roadmap bet, a positioning refresh, a market entry or deal defense) and which steps that decision needs - Step 1, the competitive landscape: Porter's Five Forces and strategic group mapping - Step 2, product comparison: the Kano model, Moore's Whole Product and capability maps by customer job - Step 3, customer needs: Outcome-Driven Innovation and the Value Proposition Canvas, drawn from independent reviews - Step 4, the business baseline: the Business Model Canvas, revenue streams and sales channels - Step 5, perception and positioning: Ries & Trout positioning, perceptual maps and the Blue Ocean strategy canvas - Step 6, strategic direction: strategic intent and the Innovation Ambition Matrix, read from patents, hiring, earnings calls and other signals - Step 7, the outputs, then a cadence for keeping them current How it works - It recommends a subset of steps when your decision doesn't need all six, and offers them as a numbered menu. - Each step hands off to a companion skill from the same library (market-landscape-scan, competitive-research-snapshot, voice-of-customer-miner, company-intel, positioning-statement, battle-card-builder and competitive-intel-watch), so it works best with the full library installed. - Findings are labelled as fact, inference or assumption, with links to real sources. - It comes with a copy-and-paste engagement tracker and worked examples. How to install it In Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills, then /plugin install competitive-analysis-process@pm-skills, or product-manager-skills@pm-skills for the whole library. Dean Peters also publishes skill ZIPs for Claude Desktop and Claude on the web, and a download for Codex. Good to know - It's a community project by Dean Peters, shared under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence. - A full pass runs as several working sessions over one to two weeks.

• “Run the competitive analysis process on the mid-market payroll space. Decision: whether we defend down-market or push up.”

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• “New fiscal year, new strategy cycle: run the full competitive analysis on our space.”

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• “I've got scattered competitive research everywhere. Give me the process that organizes it.”

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• “We keep losing enterprise deals to one rival. Which steps do we need for a battle card?”

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• “Read where our top competitor is heading from patents, hiring and earnings calls.”

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