Opportunity Solution Trees in Delibr
In this article
You'll learn how to create Opportunity Solution Trees
A plan of what you need to do in order to solve the hard customer problems
A video guide on how to get started with OSTs in Delibr
Welcome to Delibr’s Opportunity Solution Tree feature!
The Opportunity Solution Tree, or OST, is a great way to organize and prioritize user problems and feature ideas. It’s an interactive tool that lets you create a tree of documents that are related to a particular outcome. Every document on the tree can be tagged with meta-data such as document type, priority, or which team is working on it.
To get started, you’ll first need to create a document. This becomes the top-level document that will act as the base for the opportunity solution tree. From there, you can add documents that are related to the opportunity. Each document is displayed as a node on the tree, which can be connected to other documents to create a visual representation of the documents and their relationships.
You can also assign priorities to the documents and to their associated nodes. This allows you to prioritize the documents in terms of importance so that you can focus on the most important ones first.
Finally, you can assign teams to the documents. This will help ensure that the right team is working on the right documents.
Introducing opportunity solution trees
An OST (typically) consists of four types of cards:
- A desired outcome
- At the top of the OST sits the desired outcome, typically a business goal (objective or key result) or a product goal (a desired change in user behavior).
- A set of opportunities
- Below the desired outcome sits the opportunities. Ideally, these are pain points, desires, and needs that you've heard from users. You can also use the card types "step" and "role" in order to further differentiate between opportunities.
- A set of solutions
- Below each opportunity sits the potential solutions we have come up with or heard about. These typically correspond to initiatives, epics, or user stories.
- A set of experiments
- Below the solutions sit the experiments we're considering running in order to de-risk our solution(s).
By creating a tree like this we are effectively creating a map covering our insights from our discovery, and how they map to the goal we are working towards and the solutions that will get us there. The OST can then be used when aligning with stakeholders, prioritizing solutions and opportunities, and coming up with experiments.
How to create an OST in Delibr
Create a new document and select the template called "Opportunity Solution Tree".
Alternatively, if you already have a document and you want to insert an OST into it, write "/opportunity solution tree".
To insert an OST into a document open the /menu and find "Opportunity Solution Tree"
The OST will look like in the image below when you first create it, i.e. a list of nested bullets. These bullets represent the different card types in the OST. It is possible to start working directly in this nested bullet list. However, you can also switch over to a tree view of the OST by hovering over the top OST bullet and clicking on the icon that appears to the right.
How the OST looks like when viewed as a list of nested bullets
Toggle between "outline view" and "tree view"
You can toggle between the outline view and the tree view by hovering over the top OST bullet and clicking on the tree icon.
Hide branches in the tree
You can hide branches in your OST by hovering over the card you want to hide and clicking on the arrow that appears in the bottom right.
You can reveal a branch in your OST by clicking on the arrow in the bottom right of a card (always visible if a branch has been hidden)
View changes made
You can use the change log to see what changes have been made to the OST.
Embed live analytics into your OSTs
Beyond adding notes, images, and links to the OST cards it is possible to embed content as well. This can come in very handy when you want to track the outcomes of specific experiments, or the progression toward the desired outcome.
Open the card where you want to embed the content and write /embed in an empty bullet. Paste the embed URL and click "embed link".
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