Force field analysis is a change management and decision-making tool developed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1940s that has become one of the most practical and widely used visual analysis frameworks in project management. The model is based on Lewin’s insight that any situation — whether an organisational change, a project decision, or a process improvement — is held in equilibrium by two opposing sets of forces: driving forces that push toward the desired change and restraining forces that resist it. By making these opposing forces explicit and visible, force field analysis enables project managers to design targeted interventions that strengthen drivers and weaken restraints — rather than simply pushing harder against entrenched resistance.
The Core Concept: Force Field Theory
Lewin’s field theory argues that change does not happen simply because someone decides it should — it happens when the driving forces for change become stronger than the restraining forces against it. Pushing harder on driving forces alone (more communications, more mandates, more urgency) often increases restraining forces proportionally through reactance — the psychological phenomenon where pressure to change generates resistance to that very pressure. The more effective change strategy is to systematically identify and reduce restraining forces while maintaining or moderately increasing driving forces. This insight is the primary analytical contribution of force field analysis to project management.
For project managers, force field analysis is most valuable in three contexts: planning organisational change initiatives where stakeholder resistance is anticipated, evaluating go/no-go decisions on major project investments, and designing targeted interventions when a project is stalled by organisational or stakeholder resistance.
Conducting a Force Field Analysis
A force field analysis session follows five steps that move from problem definition through to action planning:
Step 1: Define the Change or Decision
Write a clear, specific statement of the proposed change or decision at the top of the analysis. The more precisely the change is defined, the more focused and useful the force field analysis will be. “Implement Agile methodology in the IT department” is more useful than “transform how we work.”
Step 2: Identify Driving Forces
Brainstorm all the forces that are pushing toward the desired change. Driving forces may include: business need and ROI evidence, executive sponsorship and mandate, competitive pressure, customer demand, regulatory requirements, team enthusiasm, technology availability, and proven success of similar changes elsewhere. List each driving force on the left side of the diagram with an arrow pointing toward the change. Rate the relative strength of each force (1 = weak, 5 = strong) to indicate its current influence.
Step 3: Identify Restraining Forces
Brainstorm all the forces that are resisting or restraining the change. Restraining forces may include: resistance from affected staff, budget constraints, skill gaps, competing priorities, legacy system dependencies, cultural inertia, management scepticism, and previous failed change attempts. List each restraining force on the right side of the diagram with an arrow pointing away from the change. Rate the relative strength of each restraining force.
Step 4: Score and Assess the Balance
Calculate the total strength of driving forces and the total strength of restraining forces. If driving forces significantly outweigh restraining forces, the change has a reasonable prospect of success with standard implementation. If they are roughly equal or restraining forces dominate, the change will require targeted intervention before it can succeed. The balance score also provides a baseline against which to measure the impact of change management interventions over time.
Step 5: Develop Targeted Interventions
For each significant restraining force, design a specific intervention to reduce its strength. For the highest-strength driving forces, consider whether additional reinforcement is possible and cost-effective. Common interventions for restraining forces include: stakeholder engagement to address specific concerns, training programmes to close skill gaps, pilot programmes to build confidence through demonstrated success, process redesign to reduce the complexity burden of the change, and leadership alignment to neutralise management scepticism.
“It is usually more productive to reduce restraining forces than to increase driving forces. Increasing driving forces often triggers an equal and opposite increase in resistance.” — Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science
Force Field Analysis in Agile and Change Projects
Force field analysis is particularly valuable in Agile transformation projects, where cultural resistance is frequently the primary implementation barrier. Technical Agile implementation — installing Jira, training teams in Scrum, running ceremonies — is straightforward. Cultural transformation — developing a culture of psychological safety, empirical decision-making, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous learning — faces entrenched restraining forces in most large organisations: command-and-control management habits, incentive systems that reward individual heroics over team outcomes, governance processes that require fixed-scope commitments, and procurement models designed for waterfall delivery.
Force field analysis makes these cultural restraining forces explicit and nameable — transforming vague “organisational resistance” into a specific list of concrete barriers that can each be addressed with targeted interventions. This transformation from abstract to concrete is one of force field analysis’s most practically valuable contributions to change project management.
Force Field Analysis Template
| Driving Force | Strength (1-5) | Restraining Force | Strength (1-5) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Executive sponsorship | 5 | Staff resistance to change | 4 |
| Clear business case | 4 | Budget constraints | 3 |
| Customer demand | 4 | Legacy system dependencies | 4 |
| Competitive pressure | 3 | Skill gaps in the team | 3 |
| Total | 16 | Total | 14 |
Key Takeaways
- Force field analysis makes the driving and restraining forces of a change explicit and visible — transforming vague “resistance” into a specific, actionable list of barriers to address.
- Lewin’s key insight: reducing restraining forces is typically more effective than increasing driving forces — pushing harder against entrenched resistance often increases it proportionally.
- Rate each force’s strength (1–5) to assess the current balance and prioritise intervention targets — the highest-strength restraining forces deserve the most intensive change management attention.
- Force field analysis is particularly valuable for Agile transformations where cultural restraining forces — management habits, incentive systems, governance models — are the primary implementation barriers.
- The analysis is most powerful as a collaborative team activity — the conversation it generates surfaces perspectives and concerns that would not emerge from individual analysis.
- Revisit the force field analysis periodically during implementation to measure whether interventions are reducing restraining force strengths as intended.
