Discovery

#16 - Jul.2021

Building new products should be a constant discovery journey. As we dive deep into new ideas there are so many assumptions on what might work or not. It is easy to fall into an "idea chaos" where each solution fights for attention and focus. Without a north, we build new things without real intention or purpose.

Continuously discovering and testing your ideas should be the go-to approach to increase the likelihood that what you are building will offer the expected value. But how to prioritize which idea to test?

Teresa Torres' concept of opportunity solution trees is an excellent tool to solve this prioritization problem. This simple framework connects outcomes, opportunities, solution proposals, and experiments, helping drive alignment across the team on what really worth investing time and what should be discarded. Solutions are only important if they are linked to a concrete opportunity/outcome. You use experiments to evaluate which solution will better address an opportunity.

Align your opportunities to real outcomes. Do more experiments. Iterate.