Opportunity solution trees: A list of anti-patterns to avoid

Opportunity solution trees are a strategic visualization tool designed to guide product teams through the product discovery process by mapping out the path to achieve desired outcomes, which involves identifying user problems, potential solutions, and necessary assumptions to test. Despite their potential to streamline product development, they are often misused due to common anti-patterns such as confusing solutions with opportunities, focusing excessively on features, being overly vague, ignoring the temporal aspect of opportunities, framing from a product perspective rather than a user perspective, constructing overly complex trees, and exploring too few opportunities. Effective use of opportunity solution trees requires a deep understanding and proper framing of opportunities, ensuring they are specific, timely, user-centered, and open to multiple solutions. By avoiding these pitfalls, product teams can enhance their problem-solving capabilities and ensure a more effective and dynamic product discovery process.