OSTs Unlock Faster Learning Cycles
Many organizations try to define clear boundaries between the roles in a product trio. As a result, some have come to believe that product managers own defining the problem and that designers and software engineers own defining the solution. This sounds nice in theory, but it quickly falls apart in practice.
Nigel Cross, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at the Open University in the United Kingdom, compared the knowledge, skills, and abilities of expert designers to novice designers (across a variety of disciplines) and found that the best designers evolve the problem space and the solution space together.9 As they explore potential solutions, they learn more about the problem, and, as they learn more about the problem, new solutions become possible. These two activities are intrinsically intertwined. The problem space and the solution space evolve together.
When we learn through testing that an idea won’t work, it’s not enough to move on to the next idea. We need to take time to reflect. We want to ask: “Based on my current understanding of my customer, I thought this solution would work. It didn’t. What did I misunderstand about my customer?” We then need to revise our understanding of the opportunity space before moving on to new solutions.10 When we do this, our next set of solutions get better. When we skip this step, we are simply guessing again, hoping that we’ll strike gold.
All of the habits and methods in this book are designed to be completed together by the product trio. The last thing we want to do is use our organizational roles as an excuse to artificially sever the ties between the problem space and the solution space. The product trio should be responsible for both.
By visually mapping out the opportunity space on an opportunity solution tree, a product trio is making their understanding of their customer explicit. When a solution fails, they can revisit this mapping to quickly revise that understanding.