CDT504 Chap.2 Opportunity Identification and Screening
Opportunity Identification and Screening
Opportunities are hypotheses
An opportunity is an early idea about how value might be created, not a validated product. The method establishes a charter, generates and senses many opportunities, screens them, develops promising candidates, selects exceptional ones and reflects. Search quality depends on volume, source variety and disciplined filtering.
A rejection is useful when the team can identify which assumption failed and carry that lesson into the next tournament.
Develop the decisive uncertainty
Promising candidates need targeted learning rather than full plans. Test customer value, technical feasibility or a business assumption according to which result could change the screening decision.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Opportunity hypotheses
- 02
Opportunity charters
- 03
Search volume and variety
- 04
Screening criteria
- 05
Targeted development
- 06
Selection and reflection
Worked example · free
Reframe a technology-led idea
- 2Identify the premature commitment.
- 2Rewrite the opportunity boundary.
- 2Name the first evidence action.
Key terms
- Opportunity
- An early hypothesis about how a need and possible solution could create value.
- Charter
- A boundary statement for the opportunity search, including scope and constraints.
- Screening Criterion
- A consistent basis used to remove or retain opportunity candidates.
- Opportunity Tournament
- A process that generates many candidates and progressively selects an exceptional few.
- Decisive Uncertainty
- An unknown whose resolution could change a screening or investment decision.
Opportunity Identification and Screening FAQ
Why should a team generate many opportunities?
Exceptional opportunities are rare, so a larger and more varied pool improves the chance of finding one. Quantity helps only when sources and search methods differ enough to avoid repeating the same assumption.
What belongs in an opportunity charter?
Include the target setting, stakeholder, desired outcome and meaningful constraints. Exclude a prescribed feature or technology unless the charter itself is explicitly technology-push and that boundary is justified.
How much should a promising opportunity be developed?
Investigate the uncertainty most likely to reverse the decision. Customer evidence, a feasibility experiment or a basic payer analysis may be sufficient; a polished business plan is wasteful before the critical claim is supported.
How should weak evidence be shown during screening?
Keep confidence separate from apparent performance. A promising opportunity supported by one observation should not be treated like a well-tested poor fit. Record the decisive uncertainty and the smallest investigation that could change the decision before spending effort on a polished concept.
What should reflection produce after selection?
Explain which sources generated valuable candidates, which criteria dominated, whether the charter was too narrow and why rejected ideas failed. The output is a better search process and a record stating what new evidence or changed constraint could make a candidate worth reconsidering.
When is an opportunity ready for product planning?
It is ready when the team can state the user or stakeholder, desired outcome, supporting evidence, strategic fit, critical uncertainty and next commitment. This does not mean every unknown is resolved. It means the remaining uncertainty is visible enough for resource and timing decisions rather than hidden inside enthusiasm.
Assessment move
Practise converting three feature ideas into opportunity statements that name a user and outcome. For each, write one screening criterion and one decisive uncertainty. Compare candidates without collapsing weak evidence and poor performance into the same score. End by recording why the rejected ideas failed and what would have to change for one to return. Run a miniature opportunity tournament on a familiar campus process.
Begin with a charter that states the setting, stakeholder, desired improvement and hard constraints while leaving the technology open. Generate candidates from at least four sources: direct observation, user statements, staff experience and an enabling technology. Label the source beside each candidate so you can see whether the pool is genuinely varied.
Screen once for fit with the charter, then separate performance from evidence strength. A candidate can fit the scope and still rest on an unsupported need; another can address a strong need while exceeding the available time or resources. For the surviving opportunities, write one assumption under customer value, technical feasibility, organisational fit and implementation.
Circle the assumption whose answer could most readily reverse the decision. Design the smallest investigation that would resolve it and write an if-then rule for the result. If observations show that uncertainty causes abandonment, information concepts remain viable; if throughput is the main problem, redirect the search toward capacity or flow. This makes evidence actionable. After selection, complete a rejection log.
Record the criterion, evidence and change that could bring each candidate back. Then reflect on the process itself: which source produced the unusual ideas, which criterion eliminated nearly everything, and whether the charter accidentally encoded the favoured solution.
For short answers, define an opportunity as an early value hypothesis, name the six moves in order, and explain why development focuses on decisive uncertainty rather than complete planning. For the group project, preserve the charter and screening evidence so the final report shows how the chosen challenge emerged instead of presenting it as inevitable.
