The Opportunity Solution Tree: A Guide for Product Teams

An opportunity solution tree connects the outcome you want to the customer opportunities and ideas that might get you there. It puts one outcome at the top, customer needs underneath and solutions and tests below those.

It's one of the clearest ways to show how a team's ideas link to evidence and to the result that matters to the business.

What an Opportunity Solution Tree Is

The opportunity solution tree was created by Teresa Torres and is described in her book Continuous Discovery Habits. It's a visual map with four levels.

• Outcome: the single result the team is trying to move, such as more repeat bookings.
• Opportunities: customer needs, pains and desires that, if addressed, would move the outcome.
• Solutions: ideas for addressing a specific opportunity.
• Assumption tests: quick experiments that tell you whether a solution is worth building.

The key insight is that opportunities come from customers, not from the roadmap. The tree makes that visible.

When to Choose an Opportunity Solution Tree

Choose it when your team has lots of ideas but no clear line from customer needs to the outcome you want. It also helps when:

• stakeholders bring solutions and expect them to be built
• the team keeps debating ideas without a way to compare them
• research findings sit in reports that nobody uses
• you've been given an outcome and don't know where to start

How to Build an Opportunity Solution Tree, Step by Step

1. Agree one outcome. Put it at the top. If you have three outcomes, build three trees.
2. Gather what customers have told you. Look at recent interviews, support calls and usage data.
3. Write opportunities in the customer's words. "I forget to rebook until it's too late" is an opportunity. "Add reminders" is a solution.
4. Group and nest opportunities. Big opportunities often break into smaller, more specific ones. Put the specific ones underneath.
5. Choose one opportunity as your focus. Pick one that matters to customers and the business and that the team can influence.
6. Generate several solutions. Aim for at least three, so you compare rather than fall in love with the first idea.
7. Design quick tests. For each solution, ask what must be true for it to work and how you could find out in days rather than months.
8. Update the tree as you learn. Prune branches that fail and grow the ones that show promise.

A Worked Example

Imagine a chain of independent hair salons with a booking app. The business wants more repeat bookings. That's the outcome at the top of the tree.

From interviews and support calls, three opportunities stand out:

• "I forget to rebook until my hair's already too long."
• "I can't find a slot that suits me at short notice."
• "Prices feel unclear, so I put off booking."

The team picks the first one. It's common, it clearly affects repeat bookings and they can influence it. They come up with three solutions: a reminder text based on each client's usual gap, a prompt to rebook while still at checkout and a monthly plan with a set appointment.

Each solution gets a quick test. For the checkout prompt, staff in two salons simply ask every client whether they'd like to book their next visit. For reminders, the team sends messages by hand to fifty clients. For the monthly plan, they add a fake door on the app to see who taps it.

Within three weeks, the checkout prompt is the clear winner. It's also the cheapest to build. Without the tree, the team would probably have built the monthly plan first, because it was the most exciting idea in the room.

Common Mistakes

Disguising Solutions as Opportunities

If an opportunity names a feature, it's a solution. Rewrite it as a customer need.

Only One Solution per Opportunity

A single idea can't be compared with anything. Push for at least three.

Building Without Testing

The bottom layer matters. Small tests save the team from building the wrong thing well.

Treating the Tree as a One-Off Diagram

The tree is meant to change every week as you learn. A static tree is just a nicer roadmap.

How It Compares with Related Tools

Customer interviews feed the tree. Without them, opportunities are guesses.

Jobs to Be Done helps you phrase opportunities in terms of the progress customers want to make.

OKRs and a north star metric help you choose the outcome at the top.

Assumption mapping helps you decide which assumptions behind a solution to test first.

Keeping the Tree Healthy Over Time

A tree is only useful while it reflects what the team is learning. A few small habits keep it alive.

• Talk to customers every week, even briefly, and add what you hear.
• Review the tree as a team at the start of each cycle.
• Mark opportunities with no evidence behind them as guesses.
• Record the result of every test next to the solution it tested.
• Prune branches that have stopped being relevant.

The tree also makes a strong artefact for stakeholder conversations. It shows not just what you're building but why, and what you chose not to build.

When a senior colleague arrives with a solution, place it on the tree together. Ask which opportunity it serves and what evidence sits behind it. Often the idea finds a good home. Sometimes the conversation shows a better one, without anyone losing face.

Bringing It Together

An opportunity solution tree keeps a team honest. Every idea has to connect to a real customer need, and every need has to connect to the outcome. The Product Field Kit includes a fillable opportunity solution tree worksheet so you can build your first tree with your team this week.

Questions People Ask

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