Everyone jumps straight to a solution
Four levels, with at least three solutions held open per opportunity. That is the whole point of the structure.
Teresa Torres's Opportunity-Solution Tree keeps a team focused on the opportunities that matter most while still considering more than one way to solve each one. Four levels: a desired outcome at the top, the opportunities standing between you and it, candidate solutions under each opportunity, and the experiments that test each solution before you build.
The point is to slow down the jump from problem to solution. Instead of picking one fix and building it, you hold several open per opportunity and let the experiments decide which one earns a place on the roadmap.
This matters more than it used to. Building is no longer the hard part, and AI has pushed the cost of building close to zero. The risk has moved: when it is cheap and fast to build, the easiest mistake is to build the wrong thing at speed.
What you get
- A blank tree with prompts at each of the four levels
- A three-solutions-minimum rule per opportunity, and why the weak ones matter
- A what-would-kill-it column on every experiment
- The argument for why the tree is friction in the one place friction still pays
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On its way
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Adapted from the Discovery chapter of The Mindful Product Company by Sam McAfee.