The Problem
Product enhancements are too often a scattershot affair propelled by internal brainstorms or customer demands. These enhancement opportunities and the solutions they spawn frequently go without necessary validation or meaningful alignment to business goals.
The Value Proposition
The Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) is an approach to help you analyze and act upon the ever-evolving insights that emerge from continuous discovery efforts while rooting your actions in business objectives. It’s a great tool for continuous product improvement.
(Continuous Discovery refers to your ongoing collection of customer insights via interviews, observation, data analysis, etc. that identifies customer’s ever-evolving needs, issues, and preferences which, in turn, offer new Opportunities to improve and grow your product/business.)
Detailed in the book: Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres, OSTs are particularly valuable in digital products due to the category’s speed of product innovation and the ability to incrementally deliver new value to customers (in the form of new/improved features). We’ll focus on a digital product example here.
Steps for Building an OST
1. Identify Business Objectives Related to the Product
(Desired business results)
Typically: Revenue; Growth; Churn; Profit; Costs; Customer Satisfaction; etc.
Tip: Since the Opportunity Solution Tree is a product-specific tool, the business objectives identified must be factors that the target product can impact.
Example:
2. Establish Specific Product Outcomes to be Accomplished
(The improved results in the product that will drive those business objectives)
Typically: Overall usage; Usage of particular features; Workflow improvements; Support for new use cases; Increased efficiencies; Reduced time to complete tasks; Higher assessed quality of product components; Process changes; Improved customer satisfaction measures; etc.
Note that, in practice, steps 2 and 3 run concurrently. The insights gained through the continuous discovery efforts of step 3 often identify the valuable Product Outcomes called out in step 2. Conversely, envisioned Product Outcomes (step 2) can drive new discovery efforts (step 3) aimed at validating the real value of those Product Outcomes.
Tips:
Target Product Outcomes must align to a key Business Objective
Must allow for multiple potential solutions
Limit the number of Product Outcomes to pursue, then pursue one at a time
Set metrics for the select outcomes by quarter
Initial target outcomes may focus only on learning to understand the problem space, then graduate to performance goals
Example:
(which we believe will drive a reduction in overall customer churn)
3. Identify Product Opportunities
(The customer needs, pains, and desires that are the gateways to achieving those improved product outcomes.)
These insights are the result of your continuous discovery activities.
Typically: Customer Difficulties; Complexities; Unsupported needs; Lack of understanding or communications; Missing capabilities; Time factors; Bottlenecks; Ease of use issues; Cost savings or efficiencies related to an outcome, etc.
Product opportunities can be expressed in descriptive customer language, e.g.: I can’t…; I want to… ; It’s difficult to…; I don’t understand…; I don’t know how to…; I have trouble with…; I don’t want…; I wish that I could…; etc.
Your Continuous Discovery efforts keep the flow of Opportunities coming.
Tips:
Conduct weekly discovery sessions with customers
Record each interaction recording insights, opportunities, quotes & relevant context
Use the Jobs-to-be-Done model to dissect needs, pains, desires
Use Experience Maps to represent customer experience & highlight opportunities
Deconstruct feature requests to determine underlying needs
Prioritize Opportunities according to their alignment with business objectives & relative value to customers
Represent Opportunities in hierarchies as needed (Parent, Child, Sibling)
Example:
4. Conduct Opportunity Experiments
(Set-up experiments that test the assumptions/ uncertainties of identified opportunities to discover which are the most valid and valuable opportunities to pursue)
Typically: Customer interviews; On-site or screen tracking observation; Focus groups; Data collection & analysis; Workflow mapping; Market research; Competitive research.
Example:
5. Conceive Solutions for target opportunities
(Ideate potential solutions for the prioritized Opportunities).
For the Opportunities that have been validated by opportunity experiments, apply standard ideation approaches to brainstorm a variety of solutions that address the target opportunity.
Example:
6. Conduct Solution Experiments
(Test solution alternatives to identify which will be most effective).
Solution experiments involve creating a concrete representation of proposed solutions that can be put in front of customers to gain realistic feedback, make improvements as needed, and determine with which alternative to proceed.
Typically: Pretotypes or other mock-ups; Storyboards; Concierge tests; Wizard of Oz tests; etc.
Example:
One Cautionary Note
Building Opportunity Solution Trees is thoughtful work that requires thoughtful, deliberate action. That can run contrary to the predisposition that many businesspeople have for quick action (including me.) So, doing an OST will seem to slow you down, and that’s bound to create some angst. But the delay serves to keep more of your decisions aligned to valuable business and customer goals, to assure that less time is spent in fevered debates over opinion, and to let you more effectively explain and defend your thinking to others. The deliberative process of shaping an OST shows its efficiency in the end results. This tree has strong roots.