8 July 2026 · 6 min read
Whether it's a struggling company, a patient scenario or a legal dispute, every case study assignment is testing the same skill: can you apply the theory from your course to a messy real-world situation? The most common mistake is retelling the case. Markers already know the case — they want your analysis.
Cases are written with symptoms on the surface and causes underneath. Falling sales might be a symptom; the cause could be a mispositioned product or a broken distribution channel. List the facts, separate symptoms from causes, and state the core problem in one or two sentences. Everything else builds on this.
Your course taught you frameworks for a reason — the assignment wants to see you use them. SWOT, PESTLE or Porter's Five Forces in business; the clinical reasoning cycle in nursing; IRAC in law. Choose the framework that fits the problem, and apply it properly: every claim in your analysis should be anchored to specific evidence from the case.
Your recommendation should follow logically from the evaluation — if a reader accepts your analysis, the recommendation should feel obvious. Make it specific and actionable: who does what, in what order, and how success would be measured. A vague "the company should improve its marketing" earns vague marks.
Unless your brief says otherwise: executive summary, problem identification, analysis (framework applied to evidence), evaluation of options, recommendations, and references. Keep description to the minimum needed for your analysis to make sense.
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