How do you know that you are making a product or service that your customers want?
The Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) is a framework for continuous discovery and a simple way to visually represent the paths we may take to reach a desired business outcome.
It’s not only about delivering things right, but also about discovering the right things to deliver. You can't have one without the other.
Discovery is continuous. At a minimum, weekly touchpoints with customers by the team building the product where they conduct small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome.
Customers don't always know what they want, and what customers ask for isn't always what they need. Don't ask them what you should build.
Discovery is continuous. At a minimum, weekly touchpoints with customers by the team building the product where they conduct small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome.
Customers don't always know what they want, and what customers ask for isn't always what they need. Don't ask them what you should build.
Ask them to share specific stories about their experiences. Avoid direct and factual questions because we struggle to answer them accurately.
The purpose is to discover and explore opportunities, i.e., what needs, pain points and desires matter most to this customer?
The Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) is a framework for continuous discovery and a simple way to visually represent the paths we may take to reach a desired business outcome.
The opportunity space represent customer needs, pain points and desires that, if addressed, will the drive business outcome.
The solution space represent solutions addressing the opportunities, and rather than testing solutions we test assumptions that need to be true for our solution to succeed.
A visualization and a tree structure helps building a shared understanding, it helps you break large opportunities into a series of smaller ones, you avoid "whether or not" decisions, it makes it easier to summarize your work to stakeholders, and it makes it easier to prioritize.
Product strategies happens in the opportunity space. Prioritize opportunities, and not solutions.
To test assumptions you need to generate assumptions. You can imagine that the solution already exists and then map out each step users must take to get value from it. This forces you to be specific and it forces you to make desirability, viability, feasibility and usability assumptions.
You can't test every assumption. You need to prioritize and to prioritize you need to identify the riskiest ones. How much do we know about this assumption, and how important is this assumption to the success of the solution?
A visualization and a tree structure helps building a shared understanding, it helps you break large opportunities into a series of smaller ones, you avoid "whether or not" decisions, it makes it easier to summarize your work to stakeholders, and it makes it easier to prioritize.
Product strategies happens in the opportunity space. Prioritize opportunities, and not solutions.
To test assumptions you need to generate assumptions. You can imagine that the solution already exists and then map out each step users must take to get value from it. This forces you to be specific and it forces you to make desirability, viability, feasibility and usability assumptions.
You can't test every assumption. You need to prioritize and to prioritize you need to identify the riskiest ones. How much do we know about this assumption, and how important is this assumption to the success of the solution?
When testing an assumption, be specific with your evaluation criteria upfront.
The team must align around what success looks like. Don't throw spaghetti at the wall, hoping something stick. Remember, you are not trying to prove that the assumption is true. You are simply trying to mitigate risk, and stop when you have mitigated enough.
"Continuous Discovery Habits" by Teresa Torres
