in reply to SWOT-analysis

Don't give up: sure it seems like a business-theory waste of time but there are some useful benefits: like being able to persuade people to actually use your code, and give you jobs!

Strengths

You know this! - What does your app do? You gave some details above. Now expand on why that's useful, and how well your application does it.

Weaknesses

You know this! - Where could your code be improved? How does it fail to leverage CPAN modules? Look at what other options exist (MS Smart Tags that you mentioned for example) and see what that does better.

Opportunities

You know this! - Sell/lease the code to Search engines, as you said above. Now think some more: who else would want this? Could a content based site like perlmonks use it? Could you integrate it into a "Site builder" type application for free web hosting?

Risks/threats

This is the hard one (for me anyway). What will prevent you from using (and making profit from the code). Does MS have a patent on Smart Tags? Assess this: how similar is it to the competition? Does the competition already have a loyal user base? Will it be difficult to persuade them to switch.

Then you should go back and see how these things link: e.g. Risks: It will be difficult to persuade clients to use my system instead of another, so... what were those Strengths again?

Hope this helps

Cheerio!
Osfameron

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Re: Re: SWOT-analysis
by carthag (Scribe) on Oct 31, 2001 at 17:46 UTC
    Thanks, that does help indeed. I've been stuck for a while, but I definitely have something to work with there!