The Opportunity Solution Tree

We are thought that products have to solve problems to be valuable (vitamin vs aspirin analogy). But the best products started without a clear problem to solve. Facebook, Disney etc....

Opportunities encompass customer needs, pain points & desires. Think opportunit...

It represents an artifact that helps a team uncover opportunities. It starts with a question related to the outcome (for example "how do people entrain themselves with videos?" if the goal is to increase time spent with a streaming app):

• Each member of the team shares a doodle...

1. Begin with the end in mind. Decide the main business outcomes that require discovery.
2. Assemble the team, a trio (ideally) made of a product manager, a designer & an engineer.
3. To reach the desired outcome(s), a product trio must discover & exp...

"Should we build this feature?" is a question product people ask themselves a lot. It's a mistake. 

• Instead, develop a "compare and contrast" mindset. Ask instead "which of these customer needs is more important?". 
• Instead of falling in love with you...

Agile methodologies revolutionized how products are being built. But building is just half of the problem. Deciding what to build is just as (if not more) important. 

Deciding what to build is discovery. Shipping is delivery. 

Discovery needs to be treated as an activ...

Customer Discovery requires a certain mindset. That is more important than a framework:

1. Outcome-oriented: success should be defined by the impact of the code not the quantity of the code.
2. Customer-centric: the user is the key shareholder.

Managing by outcome is only as good as the defined outcome. There are 3 types, starting from the general to the actionable:

• Business outcomes start with financial metrics(revenue, costs) or market share. 
• Product outcomes. Measure how the produ...

Customers don't know what they want but talking to them is still useful. "What needs, pain points or desires matter the most?" is the fundamental question:

• Instead of direct questions ask users to share stories about their experience. We lie to ourselves all the time so direct...

The insights from interviews should allow a product team to evolve a map of opportunities that could be considered for solutions:

• The map is presented as a tree. Some parent opportunities can have multiple nodes. The product team needs to combine similar ones or maintain a hierarchy.

Every proposed solution is based on assumptions, which are hard to spot. One way to spot them is to imagine the solution is already functional and then draw a story map with all the steps. Assumptions will become clear:

- The user will engage with our product: Desirability Assumptio...

Once the product team decides to pursue an opportunity solutions can be considered:

• Avoid brainstorming - an illusion of group productivity. Groups generate few similar mediocre ideas. Best ideas are generated alone and discussed as a group.
• Ideally, you should have 10-15 solut...