(2022-03-16) Torres Discovering Solutions Quickly Determine Which Ideas Will Work And Which Wont

Teresa Torres: Discovering Solutions: Quickly Determine Which Ideas Will Work (And Which Won’t). Visualizing discovery work with an opportunity solution tree has been a game-changer for both me and the teams that I work with.

From there, an effective team is doing two key research activities week over week. They are interviewing to discover opportunities and they are assumption testing to discover the best solutions. Interviewing is generative. Assumption testing is evaluative. We need both.

Martin Cagan argues that the best product teams complete 12–15 discovery iterations every week. He defines an iteration as something we do to further our understanding of what to build. To most teams, this sounds like an impossible pace.

Prototyping and A/B tests are invaluable tools in our toolbox. The problem is not with the tools. It’s with how we are using them. Our goal with discovery is to determine if we are building the right thing before we design or build it—not after.

we need to return to an idea that Eric Ries introduced over ten years ago in The Lean Startup. We need to stop testing whole ideas and instead shift our focus to testing the assumptions that need to be true in order for our ideas to work.

With solution testing, in particular, it’s really easy to be blind to our own assumptions.

Create story maps to help you align as a team on what your ideas mean and how they might work.
Use your story maps to identify desirability, usability, and feasibility assumptions.
Walk the lines of your opportunity solution tree to uncover viability assumptions.
Avoid unintended consequences by intentionally exploring where potential harm might creep into your solutions.
And quickly identify which assumptions to prioritize and test.

collect the compare and contrast data you need to make good decisions about what to build.