Structuring Opportunity Spaces Hierarchically

Structure customer opportunities into an opportunity solution tree hierarchy of parents, children, and siblings, the core of opportunity mapping.

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At a Glance

Overview

Structuring the opportunity space is the step where a list of customer needs becomes the middle of an Opportunity Solution Tree. Teresa Torres calls this opportunity mapping and describes why a list is not enough: opportunities "come in different shapes and sizes, some are interrelated, others are subsets of others," which makes a flat backlog hard to prioritize (Torres, Opportunity Mapping). A hierarchy fixes that by putting comparable opportunities next to each other.

The tree uses two relationships. A child opportunity is a subset of its parent: one reason, among others, that the parent need exists. Siblings share a parent and are similar, but distinct enough that you can address one without addressing the others (Torres, Opportunity Mapping). With those two rules, "I can't find something to watch" becomes a parent, and "I'm out of episodes of my favorite show" and "I can't figure out how to search for a specific show" become its children.

The hierarchy is what makes the rest of the method practical. Prioritization can start with the few top-level branches and move down only the chosen one, so the team never compares every node with every other. Large, intractable needs can be broken into smaller children that a team can solve and ship one at a time. The structure also shows gaps, where a branch has few children because the team has not heard enough stories about that part of the experience.

Opportunity mapping is a skill that improves with practice. Torres expects the first attempt to sprawl and says the structure should stabilize as the team keeps interviewing (Torres, Opportunity Solution Trees). This skill covers the structuring itself. Finding the opportunities is covered in Identifying Customer Opportunities from Research, and choosing among them in Prioritizing Opportunities Using Customer Evidence.

How It Works

Torres breaks the synthesis into four moves (Torres, Opportunity Solution Trees). First, draw one experience map that combines the stories heard in interviews. Second, turn the key moments in that experience into top-level opportunities. Third, file each individual opportunity from the stories under the moment where it came up. Fourth, work through the branches one by one, sorting their opportunities into parents, children and siblings.

Using moments in time for the top level has a practical reason. Moments in a customer's experience are naturally distinct from each other, which gives the tree branches that do not overlap. Her book club guide to Chapter 6 of Continuous Discovery Habits describes this as identifying distinct branches "using key moments in time" (Torres, CDH Book Club: Mapping the Opportunity Space). For a streaming service, the moments might be deciding what to watch, watching, and watching on the go.

Within a branch, two tests guide placement: similarity and distinctness. Torres writes that the goal is "to find the grouping that best reflects how your customers think about the opportunities" (Torres, Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions). There is more than one valid grouping. When an opportunity seems to belong under two parents, it can appear under both, but if many children belong to the same two parents, the parents may not be distinct and the structure needs another look.

The same guide lists anti-patterns to watch for, including opportunities framed from the company's perspective, vertical opportunities, and opportunities with multiple parents (Torres, CDH Book Club: Mapping the Opportunity Space). Another pattern worth checking in any tree is a branch that runs straight down in a single line with no siblings, which often means the team went from a broad need to one specific reason without exploring the others.

The grouping step is close to affinity diagramming, a common UX research practice. Nielsen Norman Group describes affinity diagramming as organizing related observations "into distinct clusters," and recommends that each person first write items independently to avoid being biased by others (NN/g, Affinity Diagramming). The OST adds a second dimension that a flat affinity map lacks: clusters nest, so a theme can have sub-themes that are themselves opportunities.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Build a shared experience map

Draw one experience map that combines the stories from your recent interviews: the sequence of steps customers went through, from first trigger to the end of the experience. Use the experience maps on your interview snapshots as input. Describe what the customer did at each step, and leave your product's features off the map. This map is the frame for everything that follows.

Step 2: Turn key moments into top-level opportunities

Pick the distinct moments in that experience that relate to your outcome and write each one as a top-level opportunity under the outcome. Aim for a small number of branches that do not overlap. Check each pair: could you work on one without touching the other? If not, merge or redraw them.

Step 3: Place each opportunity under its moment

Take the opportunities from your interview snapshots and place each under the moment in which it occurred. Work silently and independently first, then discuss, to avoid one person's framing dominating, as NN/g recommends for affinity work. Park anything that does not fit in a holding area rather than forcing it into a branch.

Step 4: Structure one branch at a time

Within a branch, look for opportunities that are subsets of others and make them children. Look for opportunities that share a parent and make them siblings, checking that each is distinct. Where you have a big, vague opportunity, ask what the different reasons for it are and add those as children. Finish one branch before starting the next.

Step 5: Reframe and fill gaps

Rewrite opportunities that are too broad, too narrow, or phrased from the company's side. When a parent has only one child, ask what other reasons might exist and note them as questions for upcoming interviews rather than inventing answers. Mark branches with thin evidence so the team knows where to listen next.

Step 6: Check for anti-patterns

Scan the tree for single-line branches, opportunities with several parents, solutions that slipped in as opportunities, and business goals written as customer needs. Fix each one. If two parents share many children, reconsider whether they are really distinct moments.

Step 7: Revisit after every few interviews

Bring new opportunities to the tree every three to four interviews and place them the same way. Expect to move items between branches as your understanding improves. The top-level moments should change less and less, while branches gain depth. Torres quotes Barbara Tversky on the reality of this work: "Structure is complicated. It gets done, undone, and redone" (Torres, Opportunity Mapping).

Best Practices

• Use the customer's experience as the organizing principle. Branches built around your product's features or org chart reflect how you think, and Torres's goal is the grouping that reflects how customers think.
• Keep siblings comparable. Siblings should be at a similar level of detail, so the team can compare them fairly when it prioritizes.
• Decompose big opportunities. Large needs such as "Is this show any good?" become solvable when broken into children such as "Who is in this show?", which also lets the team ship value in small pieces.
• Try more than one structure. Different groupings reveal different things about what you know, and the exercise itself exposes gaps in your understanding.
• Separate structure from priority. Place opportunities where they belong first, then prioritize. Mixing the two leads to trees shaped around what the team already wants to build.
• Aim for a usable draft. A rough structure that lets the team pick a target opportunity is more valuable than a polished map built over weeks.

Common Mistakes

• Keeping a flat list: A long list of opportunities of different sizes cannot be prioritized fairly. Group them into a tree, even roughly, before deciding anything.
• Top-level branches that overlap: When branches share many children, the team keeps comparing the same things twice. Use distinct moments in time as the top level.
• Single-line branches: A branch that runs straight down without siblings means only one reason was explored. Ask what else might cause the parent need.
• Organizing by feature area: Branches named after product areas hide needs that cross them and invite solutions into the opportunity space. Reorganize around the customer's experience.
• Filling gaps with guesses: A thin branch is a research question. Add prompts to your interview guide instead of writing opportunities no customer has mentioned.

References

• Examples: Worked examples and scenarios
• FAQ: Frequently asked questions
• Parent Method: Opportunity Solution Tree

Related Skills

• Identifying Customer Opportunities from Research
• Prioritizing Opportunities Using Customer Evidence
• Defining Measurable Outcomes for Product Discovery
• Generating Multiple Solutions per Opportunity
• Designing Assumption Tests for OST Solutions
• Maintaining a Living Opportunity Solution Tree
• OST Workshop Facilitation

Sources

• Teresa Torres: Opportunity Mapping
• Teresa Torres: Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions
• Teresa Torres: Opportunity Solution Trees
• Teresa Torres: CDH Book Club, Mapping the Opportunity Space
• Nielsen Norman Group: Affinity Diagramming

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