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.
Agile Transition Plan Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Agile Workflows
An Agile transformation roadmap can help you, your team, and your organization transition from rigid compliance-heavy methods to the more flexible Agile way of doing things incrementally. From requirements to integrations to security, you can map out your organization's moving parts as “swim lanes” that you can then update regularly. Use your roadmap as a way to tell the story of how you see your product growing over a period of time. Get buy-in without overselling and keep your roadmap simple, viable and measurable. By using an Agile transformation roadmap, you can avoid getting bogged down in details and instead invest in big-picture strategic thinking.
3-Circle Venn Diagram
Works best for:
Education, Diagrams, Brainstorming
Venn diagrams have been a staple of business meetings and presentations since the 1800s, and there’s a good reason why. Venn diagrams provide a clear, effective way to visually showcase relationships between datasets. They serve as a helpful visual aid in brainstorming sessions, meetings, and presentations. You start by drawing a circle containing one concept, and then draw an overlapping circle containing another concept. In the space where the circles overlap, you can make note of the concepts’ similarities. In the space where they do not, you can make note of their differences.
Year Timeline Template
Works best for:
Timeline, Planning
The Year Timeline template provides a comprehensive view of annual events and milestones. Perfect for planning yearly goals, tracking progress, and scheduling important dates, this template helps you stay organized and focused throughout the year.
Blue Ocean 4 Actions Framework Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Decision Making, Strategic Planning
For entrepreneurs, so much comes down to new users—how to attract them, impress them, and convert them to loyal customers. This template, designed by the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, will help you maximize value for you and your customers alike. Using the template’s four steps (divided into easy columns), you’ll easily evaluate your products in more innovative ways and make sure money is being spent in areas that really matter.
Canvas Playground Template
Works best for:
Templates
The canvas playground template is the ultimate way to explore all the features that make up Miro's Intelligent Canvas. This dynamic and interactive space is designed to help you get work done faster while engaging your team. From AI creation and Sidekicks to intelligent widgets, this template allows you to try it all and discover how these capabilities can streamline your workflow and enhance collaboration.
2x2 Prioritization Matrix Template
Works best for:
Operations, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
Ready to set boundaries, prioritize your to-dos, and determine just what features, fixes, and upgrades to tackle next? The 2x2 prioritization matrix is a great place to start. Based on the lean prioritization approach, this template empowers teams with a quick, efficient way to know what's realistic to accomplish and what’s crucial to separate for success (versus what’s simply nice to have). And guess what—making your own 2x2 prioritization matrix is easy.