Opportunity Solution Tree + POC Plan

Purpose

Guide product managers through creating an Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) by extracting target outcomes from stakeholder requests, generating opportunity options (problems to solve), mapping potential solutions, and selecting the best proof-of-concept (POC) based on feasibility, impact, and market fit. Use this to move from vague product requests to structured discovery, ensuring teams solve the right problems before jumping to solutions—avoiding "feature factory" syndrome and premature convergence on ideas.

This is not a roadmap generator—it's a structured discovery process that outputs validated opportunities with testable solution hypotheses.

Key Concepts

What is an Opportunity Solution Tree (OST)?

An OST is a visual framework (Teresa Torres, Continuous Discovery Habits) that connects:

1. Desired Outcome (business goal or product metric)
2. Opportunities (customer problems, needs, pain points, or desires that could drive the outcome)
3. Solutions (ways to address each opportunity)
4. Experiments (tests to validate solutions)

Structure:

         Desired Outcome (1)
                |
    +-----------+-----------+
    |           |           |
Opportunity  Opportunity  Opportunity (3)
    |           |           |
  +-+-+       +-+-+       +-+-+
  | | |       | | |       | | |
 S1 S2 S3    S1 S2 S3    S1 S2 S3 (9 total solutions)

Why This Works

• Outcome-driven: Starts with business goal, not feature requests
• Divergent before convergent: Explores multiple opportunities before picking solutions
• Problem-focused: Opportunities are problems, not solutions disguised as problems
• Testable: Each solution maps to experiments, not just "build it and ship"
• POC selection: Evaluates feasibility, impact, market fit before committing resources

Anti-Patterns (What This Is NOT)

• Not a feature list: Opportunities are problems customers face, not "we need dark mode"
• Not solution-first: Don't start with "we should build X"—start with "customers struggle with Y"
• Not waterfall planning: OST is a discovery tool, not a project plan
• Not a one-time exercise: OSTs evolve as you learn from experiments