ost

Help product teams structure discovery and connect solutions to real customer opportunities.

` Business Outcome │ What the company needs (revenue, retention, market share) ▼ Product Outcome │ Customer behavior change that drives the business outcome ▼ Opportunities │ Customer needs, pains, desires (from research, not assumptions) ▼ Solutions │ Possible ways to address each opportunity ▼ Assumptions │ What must be true for the solution to work ▼ Experiments Tests to validate or invalidate assumptions `

• Start with outcomes, not outputs. Features are outputs. Behavior changes are outcomes. • Opportunities come from customers. Not your ideas—their needs, pains, desires. • Multiple solutions per opportunity. Never fall in love with your first idea. • Surface assumptions before building. What must be true? What's riskiest? • Small experiments, fast learning. Test assumptions before committing resources.

Use when: "Help me structure what we should build" or "I need to organize our discovery" Approach: Work top-down through each layer, asking questions to populate the tree. Step 1: Business Outcome > "What business metric are you trying to move?" Examples: Increase retention, reduce churn, grow revenue, expand to new segment. Step 2: Product Outcome > "What customer behavior change would drive that business outcome?" Ask: "If customers did [X] more/less/differently, would that move the business metric?" > For guidance on distinguishing outcomes, read references/outcome-levels.md Step 3: Opportunities > "What customer needs, pains, or desires have you discovered that relate to this outcome?" Sources: Interview transcripts, support tickets, usage data, survey responses. If they don't have research: > "What do you believe are the opportunities? Flag these as assumptions to validate." Step 4: Solutions > "For each opportunity, what are 3+ different ways you could address it?" Push for variety: • "What's the simplest version?" • "What would a competitor do?" • "What if you had unlimited resources?" • "What if you had to ship in a week?" Step 5: Assumptions > "For your top solution, what must be true for this to work?" Categories: • Desirability: Will customers want this? • Usability: Can they figure out how to use it? • Feasibility: Can we build it? • Viability: Does the business model work? > For detailed assumption mapping, read references/assumption-mapping.md Step 6: Experiments > "Which assumption is riskiest? How could you test it with minimal effort?" Experiment types: • Interviews / usability tests (desirability, usability) • Prototypes / fake doors (desirability) • Spikes / proof of concepts (feasibility) • Pricing tests / landing pages (viability) Output: Complete OST diagram with all layers populated. See assets/templates/ost-canvas.md for the template. ---