git:20260920.16e6f97 to git:20260920.2cbc56d

1 added, 1 removed. Audit A to A.

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name: pestle-analysis

description: "Perform a PESTLE analysis covering Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors. Use when assessing the macro environment, doing strategic planning, or evaluating external factors affecting your business."

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## Codex host binding

- Treat references to Claude slash workflows as the equivalently named Codex skill.

- Before delegating to any specialist, read the `great-pm-runtime` skill and the selected packaged role file.

- Treat "invoke", "assign", "delegate", "spawn", and source Agent-tool instructions as a required Codex `spawn_agent` call with that role and a bounded assignment.

- - Set `task_name` to the exact canonical role name from the selected role file; never shorten, paraphrase, or invent specialist names.

+ - For the spawn tool's `task_name` or `agent_name` identifier, replace canonical role-name hyphens with underscores (`query-refiner-pm` → `query_refiner_pm`). Keep canonical names unchanged in prompts, filenames, verdict logs, and user-facing output; this is an internal identifier mapping, not a role rename.

- Store every returned agent identifier. Never call a wait tool until a spawn has returned an identifier, and wait only on identifiers returned by successful spawns.

- If `spawn_agent` is unavailable or a spawn fails, report BLOCKED; do not impersonate the specialist or wait on an empty agent set.

- Resolve bundled paths from the installed GreatPM plugin root.

- Ignore Claude-only model aliases, colors, turn limits, and tool allowlists.

- Preserve GreatPM human gates, governance, state, and reporting contracts.

> **Provenance.** Vendored from `phuryn/pm-skills@pestle-analysis` (MIT, Paweł Huryn / Product Compass — github.com/phuryn/pm-skills). Adapted into great-pm 2026-05-29 with attribution. Host agent: product-strategist.

# PESTLE Analysis

## Metadata

- **Name**: pestle-analysis

- **Description**: Perform a PESTLE analysis covering Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors. Use when assessing macro-environment, evaluating market entry risks, or doing strategic planning.

- **Triggers**: PESTLE analysis, macro environment, market environment, external factors analysis

## Instructions

You are a strategic analyst conducting a PESTLE analysis for $ARGUMENTS.

Your task is to evaluate the macro-environmental factors that could impact product strategy, market entry, or business viability.

## Input Requirements

- Industry and market context

- Geographic market or region(s)

- Product or business type

- Current strategic challenges or questions

- Any known regulatory or market changes

## PESTLE Analysis Framework

### 1. Political

What government policies, regulations, and political stability affect the business?

- Government policies and incentives

- Tax regulations and tariffs

- Political stability and risk

- Government spending and subsidies

- Trade agreements and regulations

- Licensing and permits required

- Government relationships and lobbying needs

### 2. Economic

What economic conditions and financial factors matter?

- Economic growth and GDP trends

- Interest rates and inflation

- Currency exchange rates

- Consumer spending and confidence

- Employment and labor costs

- Disposable income trends

- Access to financing and capital

### 3. Social

What demographic and cultural trends shape the market?

- Population demographics and trends

- Cultural attitudes and values

- Consumer lifestyle and behaviors

- Education and skills availability

- Health and wellness trends

- Social media and digital adoption

- Diversity and inclusion preferences

### 4. Technological

What technological advances or disruptions are relevant?

- Emerging technologies (AI, blockchain, cloud, etc.)

- Digital transformation trends

- Cybersecurity and data privacy requirements

- Automation and robotics

- Internet of Things (IoT) and connectivity

- Research and development capabilities

- Technology adoption rates and digital literacy

### 5. Legal

What laws, regulations, and compliance requirements apply?

- Data protection and privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, etc.)

- Employment and labor laws

- Intellectual property and patent laws

- Consumer protection laws

- Industry-specific regulations

- Compliance costs and audit requirements

- Liability and insurance requirements

### 6. Environmental

What environmental, climate, and sustainability factors exist?

- Climate change and environmental regulations

- Carbon emissions and sustainability requirements

- Natural resource availability and scarcity

- Waste management and circular economy trends

- Renewable energy adoption

- ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) expectations

- Green certification and eco-friendly standards

## Output Process

1. For each PESTLE category, identify 3-5 relevant factors

2. Assess impact on product/business (High, Medium, Low)

3. Assess probability or likelihood (High, Medium, Low)

4. Prioritize factors by impact x probability

5. Develop strategic responses:

- Which factors are opportunities to leverage?

- Which factors are threats to mitigate or avoid?

- Which factors require compliance or adaptation?

6. Identify key metrics or leading indicators to monitor

7. Build contingency plans for high-impact factors

8. Document assumptions and unknowns requiring research

## Strategic Applications

- Market entry assessment: Is this market viable to enter?

- Risk assessment: What macro risks could derail our strategy?

- Opportunity identification: What external shifts create new possibilities?

- Scenario planning: How would strategy change under different conditions?

- Regulatory roadmap: What compliance needs must we plan for?

## Worked example — Acme (consumer fintech, India)

A generic PESTLE lists categories. A useful one names *India-specific*, *dated*, *prioritized* factors and ends with a strategic response. The impact × probability scoring is what separates signal from a wall of "Medium."

|---|---|---|---|---|---|

The output is not the six lists — it's the **ranked top 3 (the "Critical" rows)** plus an explicit "parked / not material" set so the team isn't paralyzed by macro noise. The DPDP row, scoring Critical, should hand straight off to the india-fintech regulatory bundle and become a launch gate.

## When NOT to use PESTLE

- **B2B SaaS where the macro doesn't move quarter to quarter.** A developer-tools or internal-analytics SaaS sold to enterprises is barely touched by interest rates, demographics, or environmental policy on a planning horizon that matters. Running a full six-category PESTLE produces five empty boxes and one ("Technological/Legal") that's really just a data-privacy review. For these, skip to `porters-five-forces` (competitive structure) and a focused privacy/compliance check.

- **Tactical or reversible decisions.** PESTLE is for market-entry, geographic-expansion, and multi-year strategy. Don't PESTLE a feature, a pricing tweak, or a sprint — that's `swot-analysis` / `prioritization-methods` territory at most.

- **When you have no geographic anchor.** PESTLE is meaningless without a named region (see Geography-blind pitfall). "PESTLE for our app" globally averages away the very differences that make it useful. If you can't name the market, you're not ready for PESTLE.

- **As a substitute for primary research.** PESTLE organizes what you know about the macro environment; it does not discover it. If every cell is a guess, do the research first.

## Pitfalls

❌ **"Everything is Medium impact."** The fastest way to make a PESTLE useless is to rate every factor Medium/Medium so nothing stands out. PESTLE's entire value is *triage* — most macro factors genuinely don't matter to your specific product, and saying so (Low, or "parked / not material") is the analysis. Force a spread: if you can't name 2–3 Critical factors and several Negligible ones, you haven't done the impact × probability scoring honestly.

❌ **Geography-blind PESTLE.** Writing a PESTLE with no named region produces generic mush ("data privacy is important", "AI is advancing"). Political, Legal, and Economic factors are *intensely* local — GDPR vs DPDP vs CCPA are different regimes with different deadlines. Always anchor to a specific market; if you operate in three regions, run three PESTLEs (or a column per region), not one averaged one.

❌ **Confusing PESTLE with SWOT.** PESTLE is *macro and entirely external* — forces no single company controls. SWOT mixes internal (S/W) and external (O/T). A factor like "our weak compliance team" is a SWOT weakness, never a PESTLE factor. Keep PESTLE strictly to the environment; feed its findings *into* SWOT's Opportunities/Threats quadrants.

❌ **Listing without a "so what."** Six tidy lists of factors with no impact rating, no probability, and no strategic response is a wikipedia article, not a decision input. Every factor that scores High/Critical must end in a named response (leverage / mitigate / comply / monitor) with an owner.

❌ **Treating it as one-and-done.** Macro factors shift (a new regulation, a rate cut, an election). A PESTLE with no date and no re-assessment trigger silently rots. Date-stamp it and re-run on any major regulatory or economic shift, at minimum annually.

❌ **Over-weighting the dramatic, under-weighting the boring.** Teams over-index on flashy Technological factors ("what if AGI…") and under-rate the boring Legal/Economic ones that actually kill products (a licensing requirement, a localization mandate). Rank by impact × probability, not by how interesting the factor is to discuss.

## Cross-links

- **`porters-five-forces`** — the natural pairing. PESTLE covers the *macro* environment (forces outside any industry); Porter covers the *industry structure* (rivalry, buyer/supplier power, substitutes, entry). Run PESTLE first to set context, then Porter to analyze the competitive arena inside it.

- **`swot-analysis`** — PESTLE feeds SWOT. The Critical external factors PESTLE surfaces become the *Opportunities* and *Threats* in SWOT, with evidence behind them instead of guesses. Keep internal factors out of PESTLE; they belong in SWOT.

- **`competitive-analysis`** (and its TAM/SAM/SOM market sizing) — PESTLE's Economic and Social factors (market growth rate, demographic tailwinds, disposable-income trends) are direct inputs to a credible market-size estimate. Don't size a market without the macro context PESTLE provides.

- **Regulatory bundles** (e.g. `india-fintech`, `eu-gdpr`, `us-fintech`) — when a PESTLE Legal/Political factor scores Critical, it's no longer a strategy note; hand it to the relevant compliance bundle and make it a launch gate.

## Notes

- PESTLE is complementary to SWOT (macro vs. micro analysis)

- Some factors span multiple categories (e.g., regulations affect legal, political, and economic)

- Geographic and industry context matter significantly

- Trends evolve; re-assess PESTLE annually or when markets shift

- Use PESTLE early in strategy development to avoid blind spots

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### Further Reading

- [The Product Management Frameworks Compendium + Templates](https://www.productcompass.pm/p/the-product-frameworks-compendium)