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Techniques for connecting user opportunities to business outcomes and solution bets, and testing the riskiest assumptions cheaply
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Based on SOC occupation classification
Techniques for defining the product's objects, relationships, states, and vocabulary independently of any interface — the most load-bearing layer
Framework orientation for Layers of Product Design — load this first; provides the context all other skills depend on
Techniques for mapping a domain's concepts, terminology conflicts, and bounded contexts — the raw material the conceptual model is built from
Techniques for mapping interaction structure and flow — places, affordances, edge cases, and failure paths — without committing to visual form
Techniques for planning user research and synthesising it into grounded, confidence-rated findings about what users actually do
Diagnostic audit across all seven layers — identifies the bottleneck layer and recommends where to focus
| name | layers-product-strategy |
| description | Techniques for connecting user opportunities to business outcomes and solution bets, and testing the riskiest assumptions cheaply |
Assumes /layers-intro has been loaded. This skill is a library of techniques, not a script — see "How to use these skills" there.
Strategy is the first layer of the solution space — where problem-space understanding converts into deliberate decisions about scope and direction. It is about choices: which user needs to serve, and which business outcomes to target.
If the outcome and the bets are already clear, don't rebuild the tree for its own sake.
The Opportunity Solution Tree is the default; the rest serve particular strategic questions.
| Technique | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Opportunity Solution Tree (Teresa Torres) | Default. Makes outcome → opportunity → solution → experiment explicit. Good for ongoing discovery. |
| Solution bets | For a chosen opportunity: "We could [solution], which we believe would [serve the opportunity] because [reasoning]." Generate several; name each one's key assumption. |
| Experiments | Cheapest test of a bet's core assumption — prototype, fake door, concierge, a targeted interview, data analysis. |
| Impact mapping (Gojko Adzic) | B2B with multiple stakeholders who each must change behaviour. |
| Jobs portfolio mapping | Many job stories — decide which to target by frequency, severity, strategic fit. |
| Now / Next / Later roadmap | The team needs a shared timeline view of bets. |
| Kano analysis | Sort candidate features into hygiene, performance, and delight. |
| HEART / North Star (Google / Amplitude) | Choosing the outcome metric. HEART structures the choice; North Star distils to one. |
| Wardley mapping | Positioning depends on where capabilities sit on the evolution curve; build/buy/partner. |
| Bundling / unbundling (Christensen) | Should this product own more of the workflow, or one job precisely? |
| NPE Canvas | Consumer products: Narrative, Primitive, Enablers. |
| Critical User Journeys (Google / Reforge) | Which flows to prioritise — the minimal path to core value (high-traffic, high-revenue, or metric-critical). |
When you build the tree as a diagram (graph TD): outcome at the top, branching down through opportunities grouped by journey moment, then bets, then experiments. Top-to-bottom reads as dependency, not sequence.
Settle the desired outcome first, pushing for specificity. Then map the opportunities that connect to it (applying the disciplines above), generate bets for the ones worth pursuing, and identify the cheapest experiment for the most promising. Prioritise by opportunity size, assumption risk, effort, and reversibility — start with high size, manageable risk, and a clear experiment path, not necessarily the most ambitious.
Offer the technique that fits the question — an OST to connect things end to end, Kano or jobs-portfolio to choose among many candidates, Wardley or bundling for positioning. Don't run them all.
Capture only the residue: the outcome, the opportunity tree (opportunities grouped by journey moment), the top 2–3 bets with their experiments, deferred bets worth returning to, and the open questions (untested assumptions, ungrounded needs). If the needs underneath were weak or assumed, say plainly that the strategy is a bet on assumptions.
The bets chosen here define what needs designing next — the objects, relationships, and vocabulary those solutions work with: /layers-conceptual-model.
