Have you ever felt stuck in product development, unsure if you’re building the right thing? It’s a common challenge. Product teams often fall into the trap of loving their initial ideas or jumping to solutions without fully exploring the problem space. This can lead to wasted effort and products that miss the mark. In a presentation at Mind the Product London, Teresa Torres highlighted these pitfalls and introduced a powerful tool to overcome them: the Opportunity Solution Tree. This visual framework helps teams make better product decisions by emphasizing critical thinking and, importantly, employing a “Compare And Contrast Quick Check” approach to both opportunities and solutions.
The Idea Trap: Why We Need to Compare and Contrast
It’s easy to get attached to an idea. We hear a customer need, and our minds immediately jump to a solution. This quick loop of problem-solution feels satisfying, but it can blind us to whether the idea is truly good or the best option. Remember Seth, the engineer who suggested integrating Google Maps for an alumni network? His idea, while potentially “cool,” wasn’t directly addressing the core problem of spam and declining engagement. This illustrates a common issue: teams fall in love with the first idea that surfaces without pausing to evaluate its merit against other possibilities.
Teresa Torres presenting ‘Critical Thinking for Product Teams’ at Mind the Product London, emphasizing the need for product teams to use compare and contrast analysis in their decision-making process.
When we fixate on a single idea, we fail to consider alternatives. Seth’s Google Maps integration became the team’s focus, overshadowing potentially more relevant solutions to the spam problem. Research shows that generating more ideas leads to better ideas. More importantly, considering multiple options allows for a “compare and contrast” decision, which is far more effective than a simple “whether or not” evaluation.
Asking “Is this idea good?” is a “whether or not” question. It’s difficult to answer because “good” is subjective and absolute. Instead, we should ask, “Which of these ideas is best?” This “compare and contrast” question forces us to evaluate ideas relatively, making the decision process clearer and more effective.
Illustration of irrelevant email spam, highlighting the problem the alumni network faced and the need to compare and contrast solutions to effectively address user needs.
Beyond Ideas: Comparing and Contrasting Opportunities
Even when teams brainstorm numerous ideas, they often miss a crucial step: aligning on the problem they’re trying to solve. In the alumni network example, Teresa was focused on reducing spam, while Seth was aiming to boost general engagement. This misalignment highlights that teams need to “compare and contrast quick check” not just solutions, but also the underlying opportunities or problems.
Just as we tend to fixate on initial ideas, we can also become fixated on a single opportunity. Teresa assumed reducing spam was the primary opportunity, while Seth saw an opportunity in connecting local alumni. Both were valid angles, but considering only one limited their perspective.
Instead of asking, “Is this opportunity worth pursuing?”, we should ask, “Which of these opportunities is most worth pursuing?” This “compare and contrast” approach to opportunities requires us to identify and evaluate multiple potential areas of focus before diving into solutions. Failing to do so risks solving less impactful problems.
Image depicting a brainstorming session, illustrating the common scenario where teams generate ideas without a structured approach to compare and contrast their relevance and potential impact.
The Opportunity Solution Tree: A Visual “Compare and Contrast Quick Check” Tool
To address these critical thinking gaps, Teresa Torres introduces the Opportunity Solution Tree. This visual tool helps teams externalize their thinking and align on a shared understanding of the problem and solution space. It’s essentially a structured way to perform a “compare and contrast quick check” at each stage of product discovery.
The Opportunity Solution Tree is inspired by research on expertise. Experts, unlike novices, use sophisticated mental representations – frameworks of facts, rules, and relationships – to quickly and effectively analyze information and make decisions. The Opportunity Solution Tree serves as this kind of mental representation for product teams, enabling them to organize, interpret, and analyze information collaboratively for better product decisions.
Image contrasting a single runner with a race, visually explaining the importance of compare and contrast decisions in evaluating relative traits like idea quality.
Building Your Opportunity Solution Tree: A Step-by-Step Guide
Creating an Opportunity Solution Tree involves a structured process that emphasizes “compare and contrast quick checks” at each level.
1. Start with a Clear Desired Outcome:
Begin by defining the overarching goal. What are you trying to achieve? For the alumni network, the desired outcome was to “increase alumni engagement.” This provides the root for your tree.
2. Explore the Opportunity Space:
Instead of jumping to solutions, branch out to identify potential opportunities that could lead to your desired outcome. These opportunities should emerge from user research – customer interviews and observations. Frame them in customer language, reflecting actual user needs and pain points.
For the alumni network, user research revealed opportunities like:
- “I get too much email.”
- “I want to know who lives near me.”
- “I need help finding a job.”
- “I want to stay connected to my alma mater.”
Visual representation emphasizing that opportunities in an Opportunity Solution Tree should be derived from generative user research, ensuring user-centricity in product discovery.
3. Group and Structure Opportunities for “Compare and Contrast”:
Avoid prioritizing a long, disparate list of opportunities. Instead, group similar opportunities together to simplify prioritization. For example, the alumni network opportunities could be grouped into:
- “I need help.”
- “I want to stay connected.”
- “I want to give back.”
This grouping enables a more effective “compare and contrast quick check” at the opportunity level. You can now compare these higher-level opportunities and decide which group to focus on first.
4. Prioritize Opportunities Row by Row:
Prioritize the grouped opportunities. In the alumni network example, “I need help” emerged as a top opportunity from research. Then, delve deeper into the sub-opportunities within the chosen group. This row-by-row prioritization ensures you’re making focused “compare and contrast” decisions.
5. Brainstorm Solutions for a Target Opportunity:
Once you’ve selected a target opportunity (e.g., “I need help”), focus your ideation efforts on generating solutions specifically for that opportunity. This targeted brainstorming is more effective than scattering ideas across various opportunities. Aim for a range of solutions to enable a robust “compare and contrast quick check.”
6. Compare and Contrast Solutions:
With a set of solutions for your target opportunity, use techniques like dot voting to narrow down the list to 3-5 promising options. Then, employ experimentation to further “compare and contrast” these remaining solutions.
Diagram illustrating dot voting as a method to compare and contrast a larger set of ideas and narrow them down to a manageable number for further evaluation.
7. Experiment to Choose, Not Just to Validate:
Frame experiments to “compare and contrast” solutions, not just to validate a single idea. Identify key assumptions for each solution and design experiments to test those assumptions comparatively. For example, for solutions to the “I need help” opportunity, experiments could compare:
- Recommending message recipients based on location.
- Auto-matching messages with relevant recipients.
- Sending messages to friends-of-friends networks.
By comparing the results across these experiments, you can make data-driven decisions about which solution is most promising.
Benefits of Using the Opportunity Solution Tree
The Opportunity Solution Tree offers numerous benefits:
- Reduces Opinion Battles: Provides a structured, visual framework for discussions, moving beyond subjective opinions.
- Frames “Compare and Contrast” Decisions: Forces teams to evaluate options relatively, leading to better choices.
- Serves as a Discovery Roadmap: Aligns teams around a shared understanding of the opportunity and solution landscape.
- Improves Communication: Facilitates clear communication of discovery learnings to stakeholders.
Visual summary of the benefits of using Opportunity Solution Trees, emphasizing their role in facilitating compare and contrast decisions and improving team alignment.
Get Started with Your “Compare and Contrast Quick Check” Today
The Opportunity Solution Tree is a valuable tool for any product team seeking to improve their critical thinking and decision-making. By adopting this framework and focusing on “compare and contrast quick checks” at each stage, you can move beyond simply generating ideas to strategically choosing the best path forward for product success. Start building your own Opportunity Solution Tree today and transform how your team approaches product discovery.
