What is an opportunity backlog?

Opportunity

These opportunities are derived from evidence collected through

• user feedback,
• user and market research,
• user behavior analysis,
• team brainstorming sessions,
• etc.

Opportunities can also be based on a certain product vision.

Opportunity backlog

Ideally, you have already mapped all our findings on the evidence board.

Based on this evidence you derive opportunities in a second step. You can use tools such as the Opportunity Canvas or Business Model Canvas to create and analyse each opportunity.

The opportunity backlog itself is a prioritized backlog of the analysed opportunities.

1. Evidence board

Contextual fact collection

An evidence board provides an overview of all collected findings (evidence, facts) in the context of a User Journey.

Each evidence item is directly mapped to specific points within the user journey, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the user’s experience and the opportunities for improvement. This approach ensures that all findings are systematically organized and analyzed, facilitating better decision-making and support prioritization of opportunities.

2. Analyse opportunities

With the Opportunity Canvas you can translate your findings and observations in concrete opportunities. This step involves aligning the collected evidence with desired business outcomes and user metrics to know how to detect success or failure.

3. Prioritized backlog

As a final step you prioritize all opportunities. Below an example how you might structure such a backlog. You adjust / add columns based on your specific needs.

Priority	Persona	Opportunity	Hyothesis
1	Buyer	Product overview for our customers	We believe that (buyer) have (difficulty understanding the full range of our products) because of (lack of a comprehensive product overview). If we (create a detailed product overview that highlights features, benefits, and use cases), this will (increase customer engagement and improve their purchasing decisions, leading to a measurable increase in sales by 20% within the next quarter).
2	Buyer	New customer support chat	We believe that (buyer) have (difficulty getting timely support) because of (limited support channels). If we (implement a real-time chat feature for customer support), this will (improve customer satisfaction and reduce response times by 40%, leading to a higher retention rate).

Opportunity backlog vs. product roadmap

The opportunity backlog can also be used as an alternative to product roadmaps. A roadmap usually has a definitive character and suggests that something has to be completed by a certain date. This can lead to misunderstandings, especially in an agile environment where product discovery will lead to new insights that might change the scope or even invalidate hypotheses early on.

An opportunity backlog, on the contrary, does not suggest timelines but rather gives a prioritized order of backlog items that will be elaborated in a certain sequence. If needed, you can still add a timeline when you plan discovery work. However, it doesn’t create a visual perspective that leads to final deadlines before an opportunity has been fully understood.