Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value

by Teresa Torres

It starts with defining a clear outcome—one that sets the scope for discovery. From there, we must discover and map out the opportunity space—this is what gives structure to the ill-structured problem of reaching our desired outcome. It’s the all-important problem framing that opens up the solution space. And finally, we need to discover the solutions that will address those opportunities and thus drive our desired outcome.

Opportunity solution trees help you resolve the tension between business needs and customer needs. You start by prioritizing your business need—creating value for your business is what ensures that your team can serve your customer over time. Next, the team should explore the customer needs, pain points, and desires that, if addressed, would drive that outcome. The key here is that the team is filtering the opportunity space by considering only the opportunities that have the potential to drive the business need. By