##3 Visualising the opportunity solution tree (opportunity mapping)
The opportunity solution tree is a visualisation of the paths we might take to reach our desired outcomes. From top to bottom, it maps out and structures outcomes, opportunities, potential solutions, and experiments.
Opportunity mapping is a way to externalise our thinking. Making things explicit helps us understand what we are dealing with (individually and as a team), explain in to others (stakeholders and users), and create common ground.
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Restructuring / grooming the tree
Just like the digital product itself, the opportunity solution tree is never finished. New opportunities can always emerge from interviews, which might lead you to play with different ways of grouping them. Different groupings make it possible to understand the opportunity space differently (better).
Some groupings will make more sense than others. Each will give a new insight into your customers. Regrouping can be deceptively challenging. It’s really a critical thinking exercise. It forces you to question what you know about your customers and you’ll uncover a lot of gaps. That can be uncomfortable, but it will help inform what you need to learn next.
Also, new solutions keep emerging – in order to address opportunities. New experiments keep emerging – in order to check if our solutions would be capable of addressing our prioritised opportunity and thereby of driving our desired outcome.
Tools
- Miro or FigJam for the first opportunity mapping workshop (templates are WIP)
- Vistaly for weekly opportunity mapping, especially if the team is new to Continuous Discovery – you can continue to use the Miro or FigJam board you used in the first workshop in case your team requires / can handle more flexibility
- Miro or FigJam for any collaborative work outside of the literal tree (such as experience mapping, user story mapping – templates for this are WIP)
Often it makes sense to move to a collaborative tool for everything that happens underneath the solutions level: ass