Cost-Benefit Analysis Template
Assess pros and cons and improve your informed decision-making.
About the Cost Benefit Analysis Template
What is a cost benefit analysis?
Every business decision comes with potential rewards, as well as potential risks. Your decision might expand the business, introduce a new product, or tap into a new supply chain, but it also might cost the organization precious time, money, or social capital. Without a systematic way of analyzing costs and benefits, you may find making decisions an arduous task.
Cost benefit analysis (CBA) is an analytical tool that helps your team assess the pros and cons of moving forward with a business proposal. This technique helps you decide the best course of action to take with a new project by analyzing each option.
When to use a cost benefit analysis
You can use a CBA to compare completed or potential processes, or to estimate the value against the risks of decisions, projects, or processes. Your team can use this powerful, efficient tool in commercial transactions, business decisions, and project investments.
Advantages of using a cost benefit analysis
Organizations make high-stakes choices all the time. Chances are high that your competition is weighing many of the same factors that you are. That’s why it’s crucial to approach decisions in a systematic, methodical way.
A cost benefit analysis allows you to weigh the potential costs of a decision without having to actually incur those costs. It helps your team decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs. If you have no choice but to incur costs, the analysis can provide an estimate for the time it will take to repay those costs.
Perform your own cost benefit analysis
Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share your team’s cost benefit analysis. Get started by selecting this Cost Benefit Analysis Template. Then, follow these steps:
Step 1: Brainstorm costs and benefits. Make a list of each. Try to think of unexpected costs or benefits that your team might not have immediately anticipated. Once you have a list of costs and benefits, think about whether those costs and benefits are likely to change or grow over time.
Step 2: Figure out the monetary value of the costs. Will you need to hire employees? Train them? Will you experience a decrease in productivity while new hires get up to speed? If you introduce a new feature, will your system experience an outage that impacts your customers
Step 3: Now assign a monetary value to the benefits. Do your best to estimate potential revenue, but don’t confine yourself to cash. Think about “soft” benefits like positive word-of-mouth, employee satisfaction, or environmental preservation.
Step 4: Compare your costs and benefits. Which seems greater? How long would it take to repay any costs?
Get started with this template right now.
Epic & Feature Roadmap Planning
Epic & Feature Roadmap Planning template facilitates the breakdown of large-scale initiatives into manageable features and tasks. It helps teams prioritize development efforts based on business impact and strategic objectives. By visualizing the relationship between epics and features, teams can effectively plan releases and ensure alignment with overall project goals and timelines.
Business Model Canvas Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Agile Methodology, Strategic Planning
Your business model: Nothing is more fundamental to who you are, what you create and sell, or ultimately whether or not you succeed. Using nine key building blocks (representing nine core business elements), a BMC gives you a highly usable strategic tool to develop and display your business model. What makes this template great for your team? It’s quick and easy to use, it keeps your value proposition front and center, and it creates a space to inspire ideation.
Creative Brief Template
Works best for:
Design, Marketing, Desk Research
Even creative thinkers (or maybe especially creative thinkers) need clear guidelines to push their ideas in productive, usable directions. And a good creative lays down those guidelines, with information that includes target audience, goals, timeline, and budget, as well as the scope and specifications of the project itself. The foundation of any marketing or advertising campaign, a creative brief is the first step in building websites, videos, ads, banners, and much more. The brief is generally prepared before kicking off a project, and this template will make it easy.
Low-fidelity Wireframes Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Product Management, Wireframes
When you’re designing a site or building an app, the early stages should be BIG — seeing the big picture and communicating the big idea. Low fidelity wireframes empower you to see it and do it. These rough layouts (think of them as the digital version of a sketch on a napkin) help your teams and project stakeholders quickly determine if a design meeting meets your users’ needs. Our template lets you easily use wireframes during meetings or workshops, presentations, and critique sessions.
In-Context Interviews Template
Works best for:
UX , Design, Design Thinking
The In-Context Interview Template helps you observe individuals in their natural habitat and is an effective method to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior and experiences. To achieve this, it is important to observe both their words and actions. Conducting an interview in their natural environment allows for real-time exploration of their experiences. While remote and online interviews are possible, synchronous engagement is preferred as it yields better results. The objective of this approach is to fully immerse oneself in the world of those who possess extensive knowledge about the subject being studied, thereby preventing the formation of inaccurate assumptions. Overall, using the in-context approach provides several benefits for gaining a more accurate understanding of individuals and their experiences.
PEST Analysis Template
Works best for:
Ideation, Strategic Planning, Business Management
No business operates inside a vacuum, so if you want to succeed, you have to successfully deal with local laws, government regulating bodies, the health of the local economy, social factors like the unemployment rate, average household income, and more. Use the PEST Analysis Template to help you explore how the world impacts your business and how you can work around it.