Assessing Product Opportunities

Use it when you've collected multiple product ideas and need a clear, objective way to pick the best ones.

What is it?

Assessing Product Opportunities is a structured framework from industry expert Marty Cagan that helps you vet new features, products or services before you invest resources.

It zeroes in on three critical lenses, desirability (will users want it?), feasibility (can engineering build it?), and viability (will it justify the business case?). By breaking an idea into these core components, you avoid bias, gut calls, and pet projects. Instead, you apply consistent criteria across every opportunity, scoring each on user demand, technical complexity, and revenue potential.

This method solves common pitfalls like wasted dev cycles and unclear roadmaps by forcing you to gather evidence, align stakeholders, and score opportunities objectively. It scales from startups testing ten ideas to enterprise teams prioritizing hundreds of backlog items.

Why it matters?

You'll stop guessing and start executing on ideas proven to move the needle, faster time to market, higher feature adoption, and stronger ROI. By systematically validating desirability, feasibility, and viability, you reduce wasted effort, align teams on the same criteria, and build a roadmap that fuels sustainable growth.

How it works

Growth co-pilot turns your toughest product questions into clear, data-backed recommendations you can act on immediately.

Map Opportunity Spaces

List every idea, feature request, or market gap you've identified and group them into broad ‘opportunity spaces', for example, onboarding improvements or new revenue streams.

Score Desirability

Conduct lightweight user interviews or surveys to validate demand. Rate each opportunity on a 1–5 scale based on real user feedback and willingness to pay or adopt.

Evaluate Feasibility

Work with your engineering lead to estimate each idea's technical complexity and risk. Assign a feasibility score that reflects effort, dependencies, and unknowns.

Assess Business Viability

Collaborate with finance, sales, or leadership to project revenue, cost savings, or strategic impact. Score viability on clear metrics: ROI percentage, churn reduction, or market share expansion.

Calculate Composite Scores

Weight desirability, feasibility, and viability according to your company's priorities (e.g., 40/30/30) and compute a total score for each opportunity.

Prioritize & Validate

Rank opportunities by score, then run rapid experiments or prototypes on the top contenders to confirm assumptions before full-scale development.

Frequently asked questions

Growth co-pilot turns your toughest product questions into clear, data-backed recommendations you can act on immediately.

How is this different from discovery research?

Discovery research surfaces user needs; Assessing Product Opportunities turns those insights into a scored, prioritized list of ideas ready for development. Think of research as what to solve, this as what to build first.

How is this different from discovery research?

Can I adjust the weights for desirability, feasibility, and viability?

Absolutely. Tweak the weighting to match your company's stage, startups might favor desirability, while mature businesses lean more on viability and ROI.

Can I adjust the weights for desirability, feasibility, and viability?

Absolutely. Tweak the weighting to match your company's stage, startups might favor desirability, while mature businesses lean more on viability and ROI.

How many ideas should I score at once?

Aim for 10–30 to start. Too few and you miss options; too many and scoring becomes unwieldy. Iterate in batches that fit your team's cadence.

How many ideas should I score at once?

Aim for 10–30 to start. Too few and you miss options; too many and scoring becomes unwieldy. Iterate in batches that fit your team's cadence.

What if stakeholders disagree on scores?

Use data to break ties, user interviews, prototype tests, or feasibility spike reports. Disagreements often signal a need for more validation, not more debate.

What if stakeholders disagree on scores?

Use data to break ties, user interviews, prototype tests, or feasibility spike reports. Disagreements often signal a need for more validation, not more debate.

How do I measure success after implementation?

Track metrics aligned with your viability score, adoption rate, revenue uplift, churn reduction. Compare actual results against your original projections to refine future scoring.

How do I measure success after implementation?

Track metrics aligned with your viability score, adoption rate, revenue uplift, churn reduction. Compare actual results against your original projections to refine future scoring.

You've pinpointed your highest-scoring opportunities, now make sure they hit the mark in the wild. Run your top ideas through the CrackGrowth diagnostic to uncover hidden UX friction and launch with confidence.

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