I am a big fan of different frameworks and methodologies because they help lay the foundation for approaching problems. For industry analysis, you can use Porter’s Five Forces, Scrum for agile development, RACI for project management. The list goes on and on and on.

A challenge with frameworks though is that there is a risk of being too strict about their use. Being dogmatic about using every step limits your ability to be creative and adaptable depending on the context. I recently wrote a guest post about this risk, specifically around using the CIRCLES framework too strictly when preparing for product management interviews. Check it out at the Exponent blog: “A Less Linear Approach to CIRCLES for Product Design Questions.”