If you are in a role related to IT service management or project management

in your enterprise, gap analysis is a simple tool that will help you to identify
the gap between ‘where you are’ and ‘where you want to be’. The technique
not only analyses the gap between your current and future state but also
comes up with the tasks that need to be carried out in order to reach the
desired state. A gap analysis should ideally be conducted during the initial
stage of a project, while you are in the process of developing a business
model.

For example: Imagine you have been newly appointed as the manager of a
team that handles calls to answer customer queries. In the last few months,
customer feedback has not been great, hence the company decided to
revamp the whole process. You have been hired as a part of this restructuring
process. Your key objective is to improve the team’s performance for which
you have a few plans in mind. However, in order to choose the best one, you
need to understand the process well in terms of what exactly is lagging and
what should be the desired outcomes. With gap analysis, you will identify the
existing lags in the system which are holding back the enterprise from
attaining the desired outcomes. Based on the analysis, you can chalk out a
plan to reach where you want to be.