Streamlining Your Product Discovery: The Power of Opportunity Assessment

Opportunity Assessment Technique

 In the fast-paced world of product development, efficiency is paramount. One of the simplest yet most effective techniques to ensure your efforts are well-spent is the Opportunity Assessment. This straightforward method can save you and your team considerable time and frustration. Here’s how you can implement it to improve your product discovery process.

The Four Key Questions

Opportunity Assessment revolves around answering four crucial questions before diving into any new discovery work. These questions are designed to ensure clarity and alignment within your team:

•  What business objective is this work intended to address?
•  How will you know if you've succeeded?
•  What problem will this solve for our customers?
•  What type of customer are we focused on?

1. Business Objective

The first question should directly map to one or more of your team's assigned objectives. Whether you’re tasked with driving growth, reducing customer onboarding time, or lowering monthly churn rates, it’s essential to ensure that your work addresses at least one of these key problems. Clear alignment with your business objectives helps maintain focus and direction.

2. Key Results

Defining success at the outset is critical. For example, if your goal is to reduce churn, you need to determine what level of improvement would be significant. Would a 1% reduction be considered a win, or would it fall short? This question should link to at least one of the key results assigned to your product team, providing a measurable benchmark for success.

3. Customer Problem

Everything your team does should ultimately benefit your customers. This question helps articulate the specific problem you aim to solve for them. Even when addressing internal user needs, it’s important to connect the dots to the end customer’s benefit. Keeping the focus on customer problems ensures your efforts are customer-centric and value-driven.

4. Target Market

A common pitfall in product work is attempting to please everyone, which often leads to pleasing no one. This question clarifies who the primary beneficiary of your work is. Whether it’s a particular user persona, a specific target market, or a distinct job to be done, defining your target audience helps tailor your efforts and increase their impact.

Beyond the Basics

While these four questions form the core of Opportunity Assessment, there may be other factors to consider based on the specific nature of the opportunity. However, these four questions are the minimum essential criteria to address before beginning your product discovery work. Ensuring every team member understands and aligns with the answers is crucial for cohesive and effective product development.

Sharing and Aligning

The responsibility of answering these questions falls on the product manager. Typically, it takes only a few minutes to prepare these answers, but it’s vital to share them with your product team and key stakeholders. This step ensures everyone is on the same page and moving in the same direction.

Special Considerations

Occasionally, strategic directives from senior leadership may necessitate product work beyond the usual scope. Whether it's supporting a partnership or addressing a unique strategic goal, it’s important to provide your team with as much context as possible. Even in these scenarios, the four key questions can offer valuable insights and maintain alignment.

Conclusion

Opportunity Assessment is a simple yet powerful technique to streamline your product discovery process. By answering four essential questions, you can ensure your team’s efforts are aligned with business objectives, success is measurable, customer problems are clearly defined, and your target market is well-understood. Implementing this approach can lead to more focused, efficient, and successful product development.