Developing products and services with Opportunity Solution Tree

Developing a service, product or company is not easy, but at the same time it is not necessary to invent a wheel in it. There are many tools that can help you move forward — if you choose them well and tie them to yourself.

We have a wealth of experience with this at House of Cutter -- something worked out and something didn't. For example, the methodology OCHRE we have unsuccessfully introduced three times. It failed at something else each time.

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. They are used to focus a group or individual around a bold goal.

-- Christina Wodtke

For the first time, we set goals that weren't tied to company priorities, I didn't give them resources and we expected to meet them sort of in our spare time. Well... it didn't work out.

We set too many goals in the second attempt and didn't move forward in anything. For the third time, although we set one goal with several measurable criteria, we did not evaluate the forward movement on a weekly basis, so after a quarter of a year we found that nothing had happened.

‍

Three levels of management

At the time, moreover, I did not know that it was all for nothing. OKRs are beneficial when you know what you want to do, but they won't help you set meaningful goals. After years of testing, I have come to the conclusion that you need to combine three levels of management together:

• Strategy tells you what to do
• Tactics guarantees that you move forward
• Operational covers daily activities

‍

Without strategy, you go in the wrong direction, without tactics you spin in a circle, without an operative nothing happens. Each level of management has its output that the organization needs. There are also tools for each level to help you get a better grip on your decision-making.

‍

On a strategic level, I have yet to find a more effective tool than Wardley's maps—the output of mapping is a shared idea of what you actually want to do. But today I don't want to write about business mapping.

We will focus on the tactical level of decision-making.

‍

Model situation

You create a tool or service X. Your bosses set you what you will do and how you will evaluate the shift (KPI). So the strategic level is on their shoulders. They also have heaps of ideas regarding what you specifically should be doing. Your task is to fulfill the specified KPI. You work agile. You have motivated programmers and designers. It's going to be a ride.

‍

How do you get there?

You can take all the ideas you get from management, customers, from competitors or from the team, somehow prioritize them and produce them. After all, you know your customers, you have an expert team and you can analyze what will work. In this sentence, there are several traps that pays and does not pay at the same time.

‍

Trap 1: customer knowledge

The first trap is the knowledge of customers/users. Every company knows their customers and at the same time does not know sufficiently. Your customers see the world differently than you do. They are very likely to have different knowledge, motivations, fears, or expectations than you. Have you taken the time to systematically understand their vision of the world? Superficial knowledge is not enough.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

-- Alexander Pope

Just because we know our customers doesn't mean we know them. sufficientlyto make something for them useful. Systematic knowledge builds user research.

‍

Trap 2: ideas

The second trap is the ideas themselves. Everyone has ideas, but there is a big difference between having ideas and having good ideas. Good ideas have a real impact on your KPIs. Good ideas arise from a deep understanding of the people out there -- because they address real needs at the right moment. Anyone can have a good idea, and sometimes they are a work of chance.

‍

It can be very difficult to tell apart a good and a bad idea ahead of time. It is very likely that your competition has a vague idea of the needs of its customers, so it is generally not reasonable to copy their ideas. Your customers, in turn, have a very vague idea of what is possible, so it does not make sense to automatically implement their ideas either.

‍

Trap 3: Expertise

The expert team is the third trap. We are domain experts, we have processes, deep technological knowledge and, moreover, we are intelligent! In the case of management, we also have an aura of authority. But this does not mean that we can predict in advance what will actually work and what will not.

Liz Keogh gives a great guide in several presentations for evaluating the complexity of a problem with the Cynefin framework. What situation are you in?

1. We all know how to do it
2. Someone on the team has already done it.
3. Someone in the organization has already done it.
4. Someone outside the organization has already done it
5. No one has done it yet

‍

How does Cynefin see these situations?

‍

When we create or improve a product or service, we often have no one to turn to to see if something really works in our context. We thus get into the complex domain of Cynefin and there it is impossible to estimate the impact of the decision ahead of time. It is possible to probe and retroactively discover what actually works. If you have no experience with Cynefin, at least watch a quick video

‍

‍

Opportunity Solution Tree (OST)

As you can see, effective product development is a trap next to a trap. We need to fill KPIs, discern good and bad ideas, and manage complexity. Thus, we come to a tactical tool for the development of a service, product or company. It's called Opportunity Solution Tree and its author is Teresa Torres.

The Opportunity Solution Tree is a visual tool that supports Structured thinking Improving a product or service. It has four interrelated levels — goal, opportunities, solutions and experiments.

‍

Goal (output)

The expected output we want to achieve. Our KPIs or Key Results from OKR. Someone gave it to us, so we agreed on it, and now we need to fulfill it.

‍

Opportunities

Opportunities are claims about people — customers, users, etc. They cannot be invented, they need to be found through interviews, analysis of user behavior, observation, or hundreds of other methods. The source of OST opportunities is user research.

‍

The solution

Ideas for dealing with opportunities found. When we know what opportunities we have, we can come up with ideas efficiently. A number of ideational and creative techniques can be used for this.

‍

Experiments

We can bring cheap ideas straight to life and just measure their impact. For expensive ideas, we can use experiments to verify that the idea is good before investing millions. Experiments can take many forms from pretotypes (it's not a typo) to A/B tests.

‍

Benefits of Opportunity Solution Tree

• All stakeholders and team members have a unified mental model of product development — they see what we are doing and why
• We clearly link KPIs, customer-side opportunities and business-side solution ideas — user research is the foundation of the development of the organization
• There is always a clear KPI ahead of time, which we will evaluate after launching a specific solution
• Team learns which ideas work thanks to OST and solution implementation
• We can effectively prioritize work — go for specific opportunities
• If an idea cannot be followed up with an opportunity, then it is necessary to postpone it (and perhaps continue with user research in this direction)
• Mindset of experimentation is supported instead of headless development of extensive functionalities

‍

In conclusion...

If a team is to function effectively, it needs to have a shared model of reality. Many managers dream of a learning organization that goes in one direction. The Opportunity Solution Tree is exactly the tool that can help you in this on a tactical level. It will not tell you whether you have gone in a meaningful direction, but it will help you move forward systematically.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

-- George Box

Surely you have experienced a situation where the boss or client told you what to do. OST allows you to stop, think through the meaningfulness of the idea and consider the best path to implementation. It's not a little work, but it pays off.

Where to start? You probably have some ideas and ideas today. If you're not doing user research, then start there, because you're missing solutions opportunities today. In addition, thanks to the OST, you can simply explain to stakeholders why you actually need to do research...

Discover design and marketing with House of Cutter >> family newsletter.

‍

It's related

• Strategic Research — learn to find opportunities for user research training
• Why This Opportunity Solution Tree is Changing the Way Product Teams Work
• House in the house — get a team of researchers, designers and analysts for your customer portals, digital products and services

‍