Use product opportunity assessments to frame what to work on next

I am a huge fan of using Marty Cagan’s “Product Opportunity Assessment” to shape my thoughts and build shared understanding across my team about new product opportunities. Compared to other methods like a traditional product requirements document (PRD) the POA requires you to be concise, focus on the customer, and work on a problem worth solving.

Here’s the basic structure of the Product Opportunity Assessment borrowed directly from Cagan’s post.

1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)
3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)
4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)
5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
6. Why now? (market window)
7. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)
8. How will we measure success/make money from this product? (metrics/revenue strategy)
9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
10. Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)

The POA offers a concise set of ten questions which when answered together provide a mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive analysis of a given opportunity. These questions force you to think through a problem holistically, while not over-investing in up-front work that might lead to over-commitment to an idea or solution. You can start with 1-2 page version that can be written quickly and then build it out as your work on and thinking on the problem develops. Many of these I’ve written end up being around six pages long in total.

Starting with a template also helps you get past a blank page. As you almost always haven’t thought through all of these questions as you start writing you can start by filling in what you know and coming back to the other questions and your thinking and analysis develop. The outline also gives you a template for analysis. If you don’t have data, evidence and analysis to back up any of these sections you now have a guide on what background work you need to. Multiple ideas on which customer segment to target? List them here then start doing qualitative and behavior research on those potential segments. Don’t know exactly how big the market is? Provide a rough estimate then note an action to go do this work. Not sure exactly what the GTM strategy will look like? Provide a couple of potential ideas, then start a conversation with your product marketing team about this.

One slight critique of the POA is that is doesn’t explicitly ask you to identify risks. I’ve found it useful to add a specific section about risks or alternatively integrate it into section nine on critical success factors.