##9 Show your work
We externalise our thinking (see 3-visualising-the-opportunity-solution-tree-opportunity-mapping so that stakeholders can give us feedback, share their experience, and co-create with us. We explore the potential paths to our desired outcomes together.
Unlike a traditional, feature-based roadmap that shows the single path a product team will take, an opportunity solution tree is a true roadmap, showing the many paths we might take toward success. There are no right or wrong answers in the ever-changing world of digital product, but we show our work along the entire way so that, together with stakeholders, we can discern the better options from the worse ones.
When you show a feature roadmap to your stakeholders, their only option is to agree or disagree with the chosen path. When you show an opportunity solution tree to your stakeholders, you can discuss which path to take. Your conversation is about reaching the desired outcome, not about building the right feature.
Specific activities to do with stakeholders
Choosing a target opportunity is an important decision. Notice how we don’t want to fall into the trap of believing there’s only one right answer. If all of the opportunities represent real customer needs, there are a lot of right answers. The conversation to have with your stakeholders should be about comparing and contrasting these opportunities against each other.
Share all of the solutions your P3 generated for the prioritised opportunity with your stakeholders. Or go one step further and invite them to ideate with you. Involve them in selecting which ideas to move forward with, and how (list and prioritise assumptions and design experiments).
Share key experiments and results with your stakeholders.
Keep them engaged and you'll get much better feedback!
Tools
- Definitely your opportunity solution tree (in story mode) – if necessary, you can also use slides or whatever works best for you to tell your story