01 / UNDERSTAND
What is an opportunity solution tree?
An opportunity solution tree connects a desired outcome, customer opportunities, possible solutions and assumption tests. Created by Teresa Torres, it helps a product team explain why it is exploring a particular direction and compare alternatives.
An opportunity describes a customer need, difficulty or desire. It is not another name for a feature. The tree makes the reasoning between a business objective and a proposed change inspectable; it does not prove that the connections are causal.
Why use Opportunity Solution Tree?
Teams can agree on an outcome yet jump straight to a favourite solution. The tree creates space between the two. It shows which customer difficulty an idea addresses, what other approaches exist and where more learning could change the choice. A visible alternative is easier to reconsider than an unwritten assumption.
When to use it
USE IT WHEN
A team has a product outcome but several plausible directions.
Customer research needs to inform ongoing discovery decisions.
Stakeholders need to understand why one opportunity is being explored before another.
When to choose another method
Start with User Interviews if the opportunity space is mostly internal speculation.
Use Customer Journey Map when you first need to understand an experience over time.
Use a delivery plan for committed work; a tree is not a release schedule.
What you’ll need
Agree the outcome and the team’s scope of influence. Gather specific customer stories with source references and context. Bring the people responsible for product, design and technical decisions. Use a board that can change easily, and keep evidence outside the tree accessible through links or short reference codes.
What belongs in the tree?
Keep the elements that help answer your question and support a decision.
The change the team is trying to achieve, with a definition and measurement boundary.
Needs, pain points or desires grounded in customer experience.
Different interventions that might address a selected opportunity.
Focused ways to investigate what a solution depends on.
Links to accounts and test records, separate from the visual hierarchy.
02 / PUT IT INTO PRACTICE
How to build an opportunity solution tree
Keep evidence and assumptions distinct. Revisit your work when new information changes your understanding.
01
Define the outcome
State the behaviour or result that should change and the people involved. Clarify what the measure excludes.
For course enrolment, distinguish a completed form from a suitable confirmed place.
02
Extract customer opportunities
Review concrete stories and identify difficulties in their original context. Keep source references attached.
A request for a calendar widget may conceal uncertainty about attendance.
03
Organise the opportunity space
Group related needs without turning features into parent categories. Revise the structure when an account does not fit.
Do not force every scheduling issue into a single generic convenience label.
04
Select a tractable opportunity
Explain why this need merits attention now and record what is unknown. Avoid using the newest interview as the only rationale.
Consider significance for the person alongside relevance to the outcome.
05
Compare possible solutions
Develop different mechanisms for addressing the same need. Identify what each requires people or the service to do.
Compare clearer information, a planning aid and access to advice.
06
Test consequential assumptions
Choose a belief that could change the decision. Specify the observation, participants, method and decision rule before running the test.
Separate understanding the timetable from being able to attend it.
07
Revise and communicate
Update the tree with what changed and why. Keep rejected alternatives and uncertainty retrievable without cluttering the current view.
A failed assumption can reopen the opportunity or suggest another solution.
Example: choosing a course that fits
Illustrative scenario: an evening college wants more applicants to secure a suitable course place. Invented learner accounts suggest two difficulties: judging the required starting level and working out whether the timetable is manageable. The team selects the second opportunity for this exercise.
It compares three approaches: a clear weekly schedule, a personal planning preview and an adviser callback. The planning preview assumes people can judge their availability from an ordinary week. The callback assumes the college can provide useful advice before the application deadline.
The next step is a small planning prototype and a check of adviser capacity. If learners understand the schedule but cannot predict changing shifts, the team must reconsider the opportunity rather than declare the interface successful.
03 / BELOW THE SURFACE
Below the surface: a branch is not a proof
A clean hierarchy can make a weak explanation look more certain than it is.
CONNECTION
What does this line claim?
Name the expected relationship instead of trusting the diagram.
CONDITION
What else must be true?
Identify dependencies outside the selected branch.
COUNTEREVIDENCE
What would make us redraw it?
Specify an observation that could challenge the structure.
The tree separates needs so the team can work on them. Experience may not separate so neatly. A learner’s confidence about the starting level could influence how much time they expect to need each week. Those opportunities interact.
Read each connecting line as a claim to examine. What makes us think addressing this need will affect the outcome? What other condition must hold? Keep cross connections in a short evidence note rather than duplicating solutions until the tree becomes unreadable.
If an intervention improves a local measure but not the desired result, inspect the relationship between the two. This editorial check guards against optimising an easily measured step while leaving the underlying constraint untouched.
Opportunity Solution Tree companion worksheet
The two page companion sheet records one outcome, two opportunities and three alternatives for the selected opportunity. Its second page makes room for assumptions, evidence and the decision that follows. It is a focused working extract, not a limit on the size of a real discovery tree.
Practical tips
Keep opportunity wording close to the underlying experience.
Treat the tree as a versioned record of reasoning.
Common mistakes
Renaming planned features as opportunities.
Treating every branch as equally supported by research.
Measuring prototype completion as proof of the product outcome.
What you’ll get
A visible discovery direction with alternatives and a testable next question. The useful result is a better explained decision, not the number of branches.