Evidence
Last reviewed
Evidence is the recorded observation that supports or undermines a claim in an Opportunity Solution Tree. It comes from interviews, experiments, analytics and support data, and attaches to the opportunity or solution it speaks to. Trees without evidence become opinion diagrams; evidence is what makes a tree defensible months later.
Why evidence has to live in the tree
The value of a tree is not the picture, it is the reasoning. Six months after a decision, the question that matters is why the team chose this branch and dropped that one. If the evidence lived in a research repository, a Slack thread and someone's memory, that question has no answer and the decision gets relitigated from scratch.
Strength of evidence
Not all evidence is equal. One customer mentioning something in passing is weaker than the same thing appearing in eight of ten interviews, which is weaker still than a behavioural signal in production data. Recording the strength alongside the observation is what lets a team say honestly how confident it is.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as evidence in product discovery?
Anything observed rather than assumed: interview quotes, experiment results, usage analytics, support tickets, sales objections and churn reasons. The common requirement is that it records what someone did or said, not what the team believes customers would do.
Related terms
- ExperimentAn experiment is a small, fast test that checks a specific assumption behind a solution before the team commits to building it.
- OpportunityIn an Opportunity Solution Tree, an opportunity is a customer need, pain point or desire that, if addressed, would move the desired outcome.
- Continuous discoveryContinuous discovery is the habit of maintaining at least weekly customer touchpoints, run by the team building the product, in pursuit of a desired outcome.
See how evidence fits the whole tree
The full guide covers all four layers and how they connect.