How to: identify opportunities

Identify and rank functional, emotional, and social jobs before committing to a solution direction.

Use this when: You have a confirmed problem area and want to understand what users are actually trying to get done — across functional, emotional, and social dimensions — before committing to any solution direction. Prerequisites: product-engineering pack installed; a problem description, affected user population, and current source of pain (a prior situation-framing.md from frame-situation improves pre-population but is optional). Result: A ranked opportunity-assessment.md with functional, emotional, and social job tables and a scored top-opportunities list ready to pass to diverge-solutions.

Use this skill when you have a problem area worth exploring and want to know what users are actually trying to get done before committing to a solution direction. The output is a ranked opportunity-assessment.md artifact ready to hand to diverge-solutions.

Map the jobs for workspace owners who need to retain exports for compliance requests without slowing daily reporting.

When to use this skill

Step 2 of the shaping sequence. After frame-situation has classified a signal and recommended an entry point, run identify-opportunities to map the jobs before diverging on solutions. This is the default path when the problem is confirmed but the solution space is open.

This guide belongs to the robust shaping path.

Standalone, without prior situation framing. If you are starting from a free-form problem description — a customer complaint, a product hypothesis, or a gap surfaced in a retro — you can run identify-opportunities directly without running frame-situation first. Provide a problem description, the affected user population, and what currently causes pain; the skill derives a slug and produces the artifact from that input.

When not to use it. If the team has already committed to a solution bet, use place-bet instead. If the signal has not been classified yet, consider running frame-situation first to confirm it is worth shaping and to get a recommended entry point — though identify-opportunities will proceed on free-form input if you skip that step.

Seeding from a situation-framing artifact

When frame-situation has already run for the same topic, a situation-framing.md artifact sits at <output_dir>/shaping/<slug>/situation-framing.md. The skill reads this automatically when it finds it at the slug path.

What it extracts:

finding-type — whether the signal is an opportunity, risk, gap, or threat; helps calibrate which jobs are most likely to surface
Wardley summary — which capability maturity stage is implicated; informs whether the jobs tend toward exploration or optimisation
shaping-entry — the recommended entry point from step 1; confirms you are at the right step in the sequence

If the situation-framing artifact is absent, the skill proceeds on your free-form input without prompting you further.

Interpreting the output

The artifact contains three job tables (functional, emotional, social) and a ranked top-opportunities list.

Reading the opportunity score. The Ulwick formula weights importance against the gap between importance and satisfaction:

A score of 15+ is a strong signal — the job matters greatly and current solutions fall significantly short. Prioritise these jobs for diverge-solutions.
A score of 10–14 is a meaningful opportunity — worth including in the diverge brief, especially when it clusters thematically with high-scoring jobs.
A score of under 10 is low priority for this shaping round — the job either matters less or is already well served. Keep it in the artifact; revisit if the context shifts.

Acting on the top-opportunities list. The list is the recommended input for diverge-solutions — pass it directly to step 3. If several high-scoring jobs cluster around a single theme (for example, “certainty” or “coordination”), that theme is likely the load-bearing insight for solution divergence; naming it explicitly in the handoff helps diverge-solutions stay focused.

Rating provenance. Ratings labelled as agent-estimated were inferred from context rather than confirmed by the PE. Where the bet has high stakes, replace agent estimates with explicit PE-confirmed ratings before handing off to step 3.

When diverge-solutions is absent. The artifact will contain a “Step 3 readiness” section describing what step 3 provides and what to do when the skill becomes available. The top-opportunities list in the artifact remains valid input when you are ready to continue.

What you have now

A ranked opportunity-assessment.md with functional, emotional, and social jobs for the problem area.
The top opportunities are ready to carry into diverge-solutions for structured option generation.