Product Management: Foundations to Practice · Customer Discovery and Research
The Opportunity Solution Tree
A tool for organizing discovery around a single outcome so a team considers multiple opportunities and solutions before converging, rather than falling in love with the first idea generated.
Teresa Torres's Opportunity Solution Tree starts at the top with a clear, measurable outcome, the specific change in customer behavior the team is trying to produce. It branches down into opportunities: customer needs, pain points, and desires uncovered through research that could plausibly move that outcome. Each opportunity branches further into candidate solutions, and each solution branches into the assumptions that must hold true for it to work [7].
Key Takeaways
- The Opportunity Solution Tree structures discovery from a measurable outcome down through opportunities, solutions, and assumptions.
- Starting from outcomes rather than solutions forces justification of work before engineering time is spent.
- Mapping multiple candidate solutions counteracts the instinct to converge prematurely on the first idea generated.
- The tree's lowest branches identify specific assumptions to test before committing significant build effort.