Gap Analysis Template

Asana’s gap analysis template provides a structured, repeatable process to improve your strategic planning. It’s designed to save time, establish consistency, and cultivate collaboration within your team.

This template helps you identify skills gaps, performance issues, and product needs by organizing your findings into clear categories and priorities. It ensures that everyone is aligned with shared visibility into goals, obstacles, and next steps.

This gap analysis template also enables real-time collaboration by allowing you to assign tasks, adjust plans, and act on insights immediately. By doing this, you can create your roadmap more quickly, clarify key priorities, and address any gaps that may be preventing your success.

Who benefits from this gap analysis template?

At Asana, we turn to gap analysis when it’s time to recalibrate. Whether we’re heading into a new planning cycle or tackling a team-specific challenge, it helps us assess what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change. By comparing our current performance with our desired outcome, we can focus our energy on the work that has the most significant impact.

However, conducting a gap analysis requires a structured approach and consistent follow-through. That’s where the template comes in. Gap analysis templates simplify the setup process, keep everyone aligned within a single workspace, and make it easy to turn insights into action. For busy teams, using a standard gap template removes the friction from analysis and gives them back time to focus on solving the gaps.

A gap analysis template is ideal for:

• Business strategy teams that need a repeatable way to coordinate stakeholders and translate insights into priorities and long-term plans.

• HR leaders who want to standardize skill gap analyses and make it easier for different teams to evaluate and act on training needs using a shared framework.

• Marketing teams looking to run content gap analyses and SEO reviews without rebuilding their workflow every time.

• Product managers aiming to quickly identify product gaps and assign concrete next steps to team members or stakeholders.

• Operations leads who need a structured format to capture current vs. future workflows and spot inefficiencies, often in tandem with a resource allocation plan.

• Customer service teams that want to diagnose service issues, uncover patterns in support tickets, and improve customer satisfaction with clear, trackable action plans.

For example, an e-commerce brand might use the template to identify gaps in its checkout experience by comparing current cart abandonment rates to benchmarks. A SaaS team could analyze usage data to pinpoint underused features and align its roadmap with customer needs.

Why use Asana's gap analysis template?

Without an understanding of what’s underperforming or missing, teams often base decision-making on guesswork. This leads to missed priorities, duplicated efforts, and inconsistent execution.

Asana’s gap analysis template provides your team with a single place to track what’s working and what needs attention. It streamlines conducting gap analyses so you can quickly spot issues, understand their causes, and decide what to do next.

• Define your current situation and desired outcomes with structured tasks and subtasks.

• Pinpoint performance discrepancies and root causes using comments and attachments to capture context.

• Connect every task to your SMART goals or key performance indicators (KPIs) with custom fields that track progress and performance.

• Delegate ownership by assigning tasks with deadlines to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

• Use dashboards to visualize progress and metrics without switching tools.

• Improve customer satisfaction by identifying and resolving service issues faster.

With this customizable gap analysis template, you can create an action plan to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

How to use this gap analysis template

Whether you're searching for a skill gap analysis template or a content gap analysis template, this customizable option can meet any need. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get the most value from it

Step 1. Duplicate the template and define scope

Start by duplicating the template in Asana and naming the project so everyone understands its purpose. Use a clear title like “Q3 Resource Allocation Review” or “Social Media Content Gaps.” Then write a short description that defines the scope and objectives, including which team, process, or workflow the analysis will cover.

Providing context up front gives your team direction and helps prevent confusion later. For example, an HR leader might set the scope around employee onboarding or technical training, while a marketing manager might focus on gaps in campaign planning. Both approaches benefit from the same structured framework.

Step 2. Capture the current and desired states

List your current state and desired future state as separate tasks or sections in the project. Consider using frameworks such as SWOT, PEST, or the McKinsey 7-S to uncover organizational, operational, or cultural factors that define your current state. These frameworks help you see the bigger picture before documenting the details.

Your desired state should be just as specific. A team might note, “Customer onboarding takes 12 days” in the current state, and set the future goal as “Customer onboarding completed in 5 days.” Clear benchmarks make it easier to measure the gap and decide what success looks like.

Step 3. Identify and categorize gaps

Compare the current state with the desired state to identify where performance, resources, or processes are falling short. Break these gaps into categories such as training needs, process inefficiencies, or technology limitations. This makes large problems manageable and helps you assign owners.

To connect these insights to your content or SEO strategy, you can use a keyword research template to uncover content gaps tied to your target audience’s needs.

For example, an HR team discovered that 40% of their support reps lacked technical troubleshooting skills. By labeling this as a training gap, they set the stage for targeted actions that directly address the shortfall. Categorization ensures that your team tackles issues systematically, rather than guessing where to start.

Step 4. Determine root causes

Once you identify the gaps, dig deeper to understand why they exist. Use brainstorming, fishbone diagrams, or other collaborative methods to uncover the root causes. Capture insights in comments or connect tools like Lucidspark to document the analysis.

Root cause analysis prevents surface-level fixes. In the HR team’s case, they found that unclear job descriptions and insufficient onboarding contributed to the lack of technical skills among employees. Understanding the “why” ensures that your actions solve problems rather than mask them.

Step 5. Create and assign action items

Translate your analysis into specific, actionable tasks. Assign each item to an owner, set a due date, and prioritize based on severity or effort. Use Asana’s custom fields to track details like gap severity, estimated effort, or expected impact.

Continuing with the HR example, the team created tasks to develop a training module and update job descriptions. Assigning ownership turned broad findings into practical steps, making it clear who was responsible for closing each gap.

Step 6. Track progress and refine

Use dashboards and visual reports in Asana to track how gaps are closing over time. Compare actual outcomes with your goals and benchmarks to measure progress. Adjust resources, reassign owners, or refine timelines when results don’t align with expectations.

Teams that review their analysis regularly discover what works and what needs improvement. For example, an HR team recently found that 40% of their customer support reps lacked technical troubleshooting skills. They set a goal for "technical proficiency," identified root causes (lack of training, unclear job descriptions), and assigned actions (training module, role definition update).

This sort of tracking and refining ensured their gap analysis template remained up to date.

Types of gap analysis and when to use them

Different types of gap analyses solve various challenges. Here are a few you can run with this template:

• Skill gap analysis: Used by HR teams to compare employee skills with what’s needed for current or future roles. Use when hiring for new roles, designing L&D programs, and conducting performance reviews.

• Content gap analysis: Helps marketing teams identify missing or underperforming content. Use when building SEO strategies, content calendars, or trying to increase traffic and engagement.

• Product gap analysis: Used by product and UX teams to find feature or capability gaps. Use a product gap analysis template with strategic planning, analyzing user feedback, or doing competitor analysis.

• Performance gap analysis: Evaluates current performance metrics against expected benchmarks. Use when reviewing team KPIs, uncovering operational inefficiencies, or setting new OKRs.

• Market gap analysis: Assesses unmet customer needs or areas underserved by competitors. Use when launching new products, exploring expansion, or refining a go-to-market (GTM) strategy.

• Competitive gap analysis: Helps identify how your offering compares to competitors across features, service, or pricing. Use when benchmarking products or services to uncover market advantages or risks.

• Keyword gap analysis: Finds keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t. Use when building or refining an organic content strategy.

• Backlink gap analysis: Shows which high-authority sites link to your competitors but not you. Use when planning outreach campaigns or strengthening SEO authority.

• SEO gap analysis: Combines technical SEO, keywords, and content insights to improve search visibility. Use when conducting an SEO audit or revamping your digital strategy.

Tip: A SWOT analysis is a useful complement to a gap analysis. Use SWOT to surface high-level strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then run a gap analysis to turn those insights into action. For example, if your SWOT analysis highlights a threat from emerging competitors, your gap analysis can identify missing capabilities and develop a plan to address them.

Best practices for effective gap analysis

Set your team up for success with these proven tips:

• Be specific. Vague goals lead to vague gaps. Define what success looks like.

• Use benchmarks. Compare against industry standards or internal bests.

• Involve stakeholders early. Align expectations and get buy-in from the start.

• Document assumptions. Track what you're basing your gap conclusions on.

• Prioritize by impact. Not all gaps are equal. Focus on the ones that block key outcomes.

• Assign clear ownership. Make every action item trackable and accountable.

• Review regularly. Revisit your gap analysis quarterly to adjust for changes in scope, market, or performance.

Asana features for better analysis

Asana has dozens of features designed to support every step of your workflow, from planning to execution. This gap analysis template includes several tools that are particularly helpful for organizing your analysis and monitoring follow-through. For a complete list, visit our Features page.

• Custom Fields: Monitor current performance, future goals, and priority levels in organized, sortable fields. For example, use a "Gap Severity" field to score impact from 1 to 5.

• Milestones: Identify key phases of your gap analysis process and ensure your team stays aligned on progress, such as "analysis complete" or "action finalized.”

• Dashboards: Visualize discrepancies, progress, and outcomes in real-time with charts that highlight performance trends.

• Goals: Tie your gap analysis results to broader business objectives for clarity and accountability. See how each initiative supports your strategic planning.

• Forms: Standardize how team members submit performance data or gap feedback to reduce inconsistencies and improve visibility.

Recommended integrations

Asana integrates with hundreds of other tools, allowing your team to stay focused without switching platforms. Here are several integrations that can enhance your analysis and ease collaboration. You can explore more options in the Asana App Directory.

• Power BI: Sync key KPIs and metrics for deeper analysis and presentation. Ideal for leadership reporting and progress snapshots.

• Lucidspark: Use for visual brainstorming, journey mapping, or root cause analysis alongside structured task tracking in Asana.

• Google Sheets and Google Docs: Import external performance metrics and benchmarks to inform your analysis. Great for uploading quarterly KPIs or third-party audits.

• Slack: Get notified when tasks are updated or completed in your gap analysis workflow. Keeps your team aligned without extra meetings.

• Gmail: Turn stakeholder emails into action items directly within the template. Never lose track of a request or feedback loop.

FAQs about gap analysis templates