Opportunity Solution Trees: Connect Strategy to Execution in Product Development

Your roadmap has 23 items on it. Your stakeholders ask "why are we building this instead of that?" You answer with conviction, but privately, you're not entirely sure your current priorities are the right ones.

Here's the problem: most roadmaps are flat lists of solutions. They don't show the strategic reasoning behind each decision. They don't reveal the assumptions you're making. And they don't help your team understand how their work connects to business goals.

Opportunity Solution Trees solve this problem.

What is an Opportunity Solution Tree?

An Opportunity Solution Tree is a visual map that shows:

• Your business outcome (the goal you're trying to achieve)
• Opportunities (customer needs or problems that, if addressed, would help achieve that outcome)
• Solutions (ways you might address each opportunity)
• Experiments (ways to test if a solution actually works)

It looks like this:

[Business Outcome: Increase trial-to-paid conversion by 20%]
    |
    ├─ Opportunity: Unclear value during trial
    |   ├─ Solution: Onboarding checklist
    |   |   └─ Experiment: A/B test checklist vs. control
    |   └─ Solution: In-app demo videos
    |       └─ Experiment: Track video completion rates
    |
    ├─ Opportunity: Users don't experience core value
    |   ├─ Solution: Automated sample data
    |   |   └─ Experiment: Prototype with 10 trial users
    |   └─ Solution: Guided workflows
    |       └─ Experiment: Usability test with 5 users
    |
    └─ Opportunity: Pricing is confusing
        ├─ Solution: Simplified pricing tiers
        |   └─ Experiment: Test new pricing page with traffic
        └─ Solution: Usage-based pricing calculator
            └─ Experiment: Interview 10 trial users

The tree makes your strategy visible. Anyone can look at it and understand:

1. What outcome we're trying to achieve
2. What customer needs we believe matter most
3. What solutions we're exploring
4. How we're testing our assumptions

Why This Matters: The Flat Roadmap Problem

Traditional roadmaps are solution-first:

• Q1: Build onboarding checklist
• Q2: Add in-app videos
• Q3: Redesign pricing page

This roadmap doesn't tell you:

• Why these solutions over others
• What customer need each solution addresses
• How these connect to business goals
• What assumptions you're making

When priorities change (and they will), you have no framework for making trade-offs. You fall back to HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion) or loudest voice wins.

Opportunity Solution Trees give you that framework.

How to Build an Opportunity Solution Tree

Step 1: Start with a Clear Outcome

Not "improve the product" or "make customers happy". Those aren't outcomes—they're aspirations.

A good outcome is:

• Measurable
• Timebound
• Connected to business success
• Within your team's control

Examples:

• ✅ "Increase trial-to-paid conversion from 12% to 18% by Q2"
• ✅ "Reduce time-to-first-value to under 10 minutes for new users"
• ✅ "Increase daily active usage from 40% to 55% by end of year"
• ❌ "Build a better onboarding experience" (that's a solution, not an outcome)
• ❌ "Delight customers" (not measurable)

Step 2: Discover Opportunities

Opportunities are customer needs, pain points, or desires that, if addressed, would help you achieve your outcome.

How to find opportunities:

• Customer interviews (ask about their experience, goals, frustrations)
• Support tickets (patterns of complaints or confusion)
• Usage data (where do users get stuck or drop off?)
• Sales feedback (what's blocking conversions?)

Good opportunity statements:

• "Unclear what to do first after signing up"
• "Difficult to convince teammates to join"
• "Uncertain if the tool will work with our workflow"
• "Pricing feels risky without knowing usage"

Not opportunities:

• "Need a better onboarding flow" (that's a solution)
• "Want more features" (too vague)

You should have 5-15 opportunities for any given outcome. If you have 50, you're being too granular. If you have 2, you haven't done enough discovery.

Step 3: Generate Solutions for Each Opportunity

For each opportunity, brainstorm multiple possible solutions. The key word is multiple. If you only have one solution per opportunity, you're solution-first, not opportunity-first.

Example:

• Opportunity: "Unclear what to do first after signing up"
  • Solution: Onboarding checklist
  • Solution: Automated sample data to explore
  • Solution: 60-second demo video on dashboard
  • Solution: Onboarding email sequence
  • Solution: Live onboarding webinars

Notice: you're not committing to build all of these. You're exploring options.

Step 4: Design Experiments to Test Solutions

Before you commit to building a solution, test your assumptions. Experiments should be:

• Fast (days or weeks, not months)
• Cheap (don't build production-ready features to test an idea)
• Informative (you learn something regardless of outcome)

Types of experiments:

• One-on-one interviews: "Show me how you'd use this if it existed"
• Prototypes: Fake the solution with Figma, test with 5-10 users
• Concierge tests: Manually do what the feature would do, see if it helps
• A/B tests: Build minimal version, test with real traffic

Example:

• Solution: Onboarding checklist
  • Experiment: Create a Figma prototype, show to 8 trial users during onboarding calls, measure if they understand what to do next

Step 5: Iterate Based on Learning

As experiments run, you learn:

• Which opportunities actually matter most
• Which solutions show promise
• Which assumptions were wrong

Your tree evolves:

• Prune solutions that don't work
• Grow branches for opportunities that show strong signals
• Add new opportunities as you discover them

This is continuous discovery. Your tree is never "done"—it's a living strategy map.

A Real Example: B2B SaaS Onboarding

Let's say you're working on a project management tool and your outcome is:

"Increase trial-to-paid conversion from 15% to 22% within 6 months"

You interview 20 trial users who didn't convert and analyze support tickets. You discover these opportunities:

1. "Don't know how to invite teammates" (12 users mentioned)
2. "Unclear which features are essential vs. nice-to-have" (18 users mentioned)
3. "Worried about migrating data from current tool" (8 users mentioned)
4. "Can't tell if it's worth the price without using it fully" (15 users mentioned)

You decide to focus on opportunity #2 first (highest frequency + directly impacts trial experience).

Opportunity: "Unclear which features are essential vs. nice-to-have"

Solutions to explore:

• Solution A: Feature tour highlighting core workflow
• Solution B: "Start with essentials" simplified mode
• Solution C: Onboarding checklist with 3 must-do steps

Experiments:

• Prototype Solution A, test with 5 users: 4/5 skip the tour immediately (fail)
• Build Solution C as MVP, A/B test with 30% of trials: 68% complete checklist, 12% increase in feature usage (promising)
• Solution B paused for now (resource constraints)

You've now validated that Solution C works, and you can commit to building it fully. If it hadn't worked, you'd have learned that quickly without wasting months building the wrong thing.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake 1: Only having one solution per opportunity
If you only consider one solution, you're not really exploring—you're just documenting your original plan. Force yourself to generate at least 2-3 solutions per opportunity.

Mistake 2: Skipping experiments
The tree is not a roadmap of things to build. It's a map of things to explore. Experiment before you commit.

Mistake 3: Picking opportunities you want to work on vs. what customers need
Your tree should reflect actual customer needs, not your personal preferences or cool tech you want to try.

Mistake 4: Building the tree once and never updating it
The tree should evolve weekly as you learn. If your tree hasn't changed in a month, you're not doing continuous discovery.

How to Use Opportunity Solution Trees as a Team

The real power of OSTs is alignment. Here's how to use them:

Weekly team reviews:

• What experiments did we run?
• What did we learn?
• What do we want to test next?
• Should we prune any branches?

Stakeholder communication:
When a stakeholder asks "why aren't we building X?", you can point to the tree:

• "X would address this opportunity, but our experiments show Y has stronger signals"
• "We haven't discovered an opportunity yet where X would be the best solution"

Roadmap prioritization:
Your roadmap becomes the "solutions we've validated and are committing to build" subset of your tree.

Getting Started This Week

1. Pick one business outcome your team is responsible for
2. List 5-10 customer opportunities that, if addressed, would help achieve that outcome (interview customers if you're unsure)
3. For your top 2 opportunities, brainstorm 3 solutions each
4. Design one experiment to test your most promising solution

You don't need software for this. Start with a whiteboard or Miro board. The tool matters less than the practice.

Want to build Opportunity Solution Trees with your customer feedback automatically mapped? Vockify includes Teresa Torres' Opportunity Solution Tree framework built-in. Our tree builder lets you define your outcome, map customer jobs and opportunities, propose solutions, and track experiments—all connected to your actual feedback themes. See which feedback supports each opportunity, and build strategy that's grounded in customer evidence. Try it free.