The purpose of this note is to answer the following questions: (a) How to identify the relevant environment of one's company? (b) What are the sources of environmental information? (c) How can one forecast the development in the environment? (d) How does one interpret the information so collected? (e) How does one communicate one's analysis to the other prospective users of the environmental information? The note conceptualizes the process of environmental analysis as consisting of five phases with common questions relating to rationale, content, structure, process and timing.