Orchestrate a complete competitive analysis across six steps, from landscape to strategic direction. Use when you need the full picture, not a single scan or card.
Install
The skill file stays in the publisher's repository.
Paste the copied command in a terminal. It installs this SKILL.md into that agent.
npx skills add deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills --skill competitive-analysis-process -a cursor -y
Download skills/competitive-analysis-process/SKILL.md from the publisher, or copy the path and open the repository. PlugMCP lists the skill and does not host the file.
Where does competitive-analysis-process live?
The publisher keeps it at https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.
Which agents can use competitive-analysis-process?
Claude, Cursor, and Codex can read a SKILL.md you add from the publisher's repository.
Orchestrate a complete competitive analysis across six steps, from landscape to strategic direction. Use when you need the full picture, not a single scan or card.
name: competitive-analysis-process
argument-hint: "[competitor set or market, and the decision this analysis supports]"
description: "Orchestrate a complete competitive analysis across six steps, from landscape to strategic direction. Use when you need the full picture, not a single scan or card."
intent: >-
The umbrella workflow for competitive analysis: six analytical steps — landscape overview, product
comparison, customer-need fulfillment, business baseline, perception and positioning, strategic
direction — each grounded in named frameworks and delegated to the right investigation skill, ending
in the four output artifacts that make the work actionable.
type: workflow
theme: market-intelligence
best_for:
"Running a complete competitive analysis instead of a one-off scan"
"Sequencing the market-intelligence skills into one coherent engagement"
"Choosing which analytical step (and which framework) a competitive question actually needs"
scenarios:
"New fiscal year, new strategy cycle — run the full competitive analysis on our space"
"I've got scattered competitive research everywhere; give me the process that organizes it"
estimated_time: "1-2 weeks calendar time; each step is a 20-45 min working session"
Competitive Analysis Process
Purpose
Orchestrate rigorous, repeatable competitive analysis across six analytical steps, producing four
actionable output types (battle cards, comparison matrices, positioning counter-moves, threat
assessments). This is the umbrella: each step names its purpose, its frameworks, and the skill that
does the work — the way discovery-process orchestrates the discovery skills. Run all six for a
strategy cycle; run one when a specific question walks in the door. The steps build on each other, but
the sequence bends to the decision.
Input
Works best with: the market or competitor set in scope, and the decision this analysis
supports — a roadmap bet, a positioning refresh, a market entry, deal defense. The decision
determines which steps get depth and which get a pass.
Also useful: any existing intelligence — a prior landscape scan, snapshots, battle cards, or
company-intel output — so steps consume rather than repeat it.
Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an
appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it; don't re-ask.
Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The workflow opens by asking what decision is on the table
and what you already know, then recommends which steps to run and in what order.
Example invocation:Run the competitive analysis process on the mid-market payroll space — decision: whether we defend down-market or push up. We have last quarter's landscape scan.
Key Concepts
Six steps, four outputs. The steps are analytical lenses; the outputs (battle cards, comparison
matrices, positioning moves, threat assessments) are what sales, execs, and roadmap owners actually
consume. A step that doesn't feed an output is a detour.
Steps delegate; this skill orchestrates. Each step below names the skill that does the work.
This file holds the sequence, the frameworks, and the decision points — not the research mechanics.
Named frameworks, cited. Each step stands on published strategy work — Porter's Five Forces,
the Kano model, Jobs-to-be-Done, the Business Model Canvas, Ries & Trout positioning, Hamel &
Prahalad strategic intent. The frameworks are defined where used; agents shouldn't assume prior
knowledge.
Present ≠ future. Steps 1-5 read where competitors are; Step 6 reads where they're going —
and it's the step most teams skip, which is why they're perpetually surprised.
Application
Step 0 — Scope. Confirm the decision, the competitor set (or run
market-landscape-scan to find it), and which steps matter.
Offer the six steps as a numbered menu; recommend a subset when the decision doesn't need all six.
Step 1: Overview of the Competitive Landscape
Who's in the game, where, and how they operate — market saturation, fragmentation, disruptive entrants.
Frameworks: Porter's Five Forces (industry structure); strategic group mapping (clustering
competitors by GTM model, innovation pattern, or regional depth); market fragmentation indexing.
Run:market-landscape-scan — segments, player map,
dynamics, whitespace with the dead-zone test.
Decision point: which 2-4 players deserve depth? Everything downstream narrows to them.
Step 2: Comparisons at the Product Level
Beyond feature lists: value delivery, architecture, interoperability, lifecycle maturity.
Frameworks: Kano model (which features delight vs. merely satisfy); Geoffrey Moore's Whole
Product model (core product vs. the ring of services and integrations deals actually hinge on);
JTBD-based capability maps (compare by customer job, not by feature name).
Watch for: feature parity theater. A capability map by job-to-be-done exposes what a feature
checklist hides: two "identical" features serving different jobs badly.
Step 3: Ability to Fulfill Customer Needs
How well they serve real customers — outcomes, support quality, ecosystem benefits — not tech specs.
Frameworks: Outcome-Driven Innovation (score against customer-defined outcomes); Value
Proposition Canvas (their promise vs. the jobs/pains/gains that matter).
Run:voice-of-customer-miner across the sources your
buyer reads — need themes, quoted verbatims, competitor weak points, and switching triggers, each
with a source-bias note.
Watch for: vendor-authored "reviews" and case studies. Independent complaint clusters are the
signal; curated success stories are marketing.
Step 4: Compilation of Business Information
The financial, organizational, and market baseline: structure, revenue streams, growth levers, channels.
Frameworks: Business Model Canvas (how the whole machine fits together); revenue stream
breakdown; sales channel profiling (direct vs. OEM vs. VAR vs. platform).
Run:company-intel per deep-dive competitor — its eleven-section
output (financials, offers, org signals) is this step's artifact; FININT sources per
intelligence-collection-disciplines do the heavy lifting.
Watch for: press-release accounting. Filings and earnings calls outrank announcements —
companies lie less where lying is a felony.
Step 5: Perception and Relative Positioning
How buyers perceive you versus them — in promise, emotion, and mental association, not capability.
Frameworks: Ries & Trout positioning theory (the battle is for the buyer's mind); perceptual
mapping (price vs. value-perception plots; find the uncontested space); Blue Ocean strategy canvas.
Run: contrast their stated positioning (Step 2 snapshots) against customer language (Step 3
review mining); draft or revise with positioning-statement.
Watch for: the promise-delivery gap — where a competitor's marketing writes checks their reviews
say they don't cash. That gap is a positioning counter-move waiting to be claimed.
Step 6: Competitors' Strategic Direction
Where they're going, not where they are — the step that lets you preempt instead of react.
Frameworks: Hamel & Prahalad's strategic intent (read the ambition behind the moves); the
Innovation Ambition Matrix (core/adjacent/transformational mix of their bets).
Run: the forward-looking disciplines in
intelligence-collection-disciplines — TECHINT
(patent clusters, trademark filings, preprints), HUMINT (hiring surges, leadership moves), FININT
(earnings language, M&A themes), MASINT (supply chain, facility buildout) — fused via the
confidence-stacking rule. competitive-intel-watch keeps
this step running on a cadence after the initial pass.
Watch for: single-signal panic. One patent is exploration; a cluster plus a hiring surge plus a
subdomain cert is a committed bet. Stack before you brief.
Step 7: Produce the Outputs
Close by building what the audience consumes — offer as a numbered menu:
Executive comparison matrix — from Step 2's snapshot
Positioning counter-moves — from Step 5's gap analysis
Threat assessment brief — Step 6's fused signals, with confidence levels and recommended responses
Then set the maintenance cadence: competitive-intel-watch on
the schedule the artifact mapping in intelligence-collection-disciplines prescribes (weekly SIGINT
layer for cards, quarterly deep passes for direction).
A copy/paste engagement tracker for all seven steps lives in template.md.
Examples
Scoping to the decision (fictional): the decision is deal defense against one rival in enterprise
deals. The right subset is Steps 2, 3, and 5 on that one competitor, straight into a battle card —
Steps 1, 4, and 6 add days, not win-rate. The orchestrator's value is permission to skip: "Based on
your decision, I recommend Steps 2→3→5 only. Run the full six?
Yes, deal defense scope (2, 3, 5 → battle card)
Add Step 6 — they've been acquiring lately and I want the direction read
Full six-step pass
Something else"
Step 6 catching what Steps 1-5 missed: the present-state read shows a competitor stable and
mid-pack. The direction pass finds a patent cluster in a new classification, four platform-engineer
postings, and an earnings call where the CFO declined to break out R&D — three disciplines, one story:
a platform pivot in progress. The threat assessment brief re-ranks them from "monitor" to "act," a
quarter before their announcement would have forced a reactive scramble.
See examples/sample.md for a complete worked engagement (fictional
FSM-software market) showing the orchestration decisions — scoping menu, recorded skips, and
step-to-step compounding — with links into the delegated skills' own worked artifacts.
examples/sample-industrial.md shows the umbrella bending —
steps merged, one run out of order, cadence slowed — with each call's reasoning stated.
Common Pitfalls
Running all six on autopilot. The steps are a menu, not a mandate. Scope to the decision or the
analysis ships after the decision got made without it.
Skipping Step 6. Present-state analysis ages the moment it ships; direction analysis is what
buys you a quarter of lead time. Teams that skip it are perpetually surprised on launch day.
Framework name-dropping. Citing Five Forces without rating the forces, or Kano without
classifying a single feature. A framework earns its mention by producing a judgment.
Analysis without outputs. Six beautiful steps and no battle card, no matrix, no brief. Step 7
isn't optional — research is only done when it names the artifact it changes.
One-time heroics. A grand annual analysis that's stale by month three. The process ends by
installing the watch cadence, or it didn't end — it just stopped.
External frameworks: Porter, How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy (HBR, 1979); Kano, attractive
quality theory; Moore, Crossing the Chasm (Whole Product); Ulwick, Outcome-Driven Innovation;
Osterwalder & Pigneur, Business Model Generation; Ries & Trout, Positioning; Hamel & Prahalad,
Competing for the Future (HBR, 1994); Nagji & Tuff, Managing Your Innovation Portfolio (HBR, 2012)
Adapted from practitioner experience running structured competitive analyses.
How do I install competitive-analysis-process?
Download skills/competitive-analysis-process/SKILL.md from the publisher, or copy the path and open the repository. PlugMCP lists the skill and does not host the file.
Where does competitive-analysis-process live?
The publisher keeps it at https://github.com/deanpeters/Product-Manager-Skills.
Which agents can use competitive-analysis-process?
Claude, Cursor, and Codex can read a SKILL.md you add from the publisher's repository.