Forrester Wave

A Forrester Wave is a comparative evaluation of a defined set of providers in a technology or services market, scored against published criteria grouped into current offering and strategy.

Forrester defines the scope and inclusion criteria, distributes a questionnaire, takes briefings and demos, and interviews reference customers supplied by each vendor. Evaluated vendors receive a courtesy preview of the final report shortly before publication. Forrester reserves the right to evaluate providers regardless of whether they participate.

The Wave graphic changed — three bands, not four

For Wave evaluations kicking off from 1 July 2024 and publishing from Q4 2024, the graphic shows three bands rather than four: Leader, Strong Performer and Contender. This aligns the graphic with Forrester's three-point scoring rubric.

Customer feedback also replaced market presence in the marker treatment. Vendors with stronger customer feedback receive a more prominent marker on the graphic.

Any glossary, deck, agency brief or competitor comparison still describing four bands and market-presence bubbles is describing a superseded version.

Forrester Wave vs. Gartner Magic Quadrant

See Magic Quadrant for the full comparison. In short: three bands against current offering and strategy, with customer feedback in the marker, versus four quadrants against Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision.

Rules on reference customers

Forrester contacts each reference supplied. While a Wave is in progress, it treats vendor attempts to speak with references about their responses — or to have them revise responses after an interview — as a methodology violation, which may cost the vendor part or all of its review process.

Why it matters

The banding change is a small fact with a large tell attached to it. The superseded four-band description is still repeated across most of the internet, in agency decks, vendor comparison pages and competitor glossaries.

Which means that on this particular question, the sources a buyer or an AI system is most likely to retrieve are wrong — and being demonstrably right about it costs nothing but the checking.

Related: Forrester Landscape · Gartner Magic Quadrant · Reference customer · Scoring rubric

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