Product in Practice: Mapping Opportunities at trivago

Teresa Torres profiles how Sören Weber and the Search & Flow team at trivago adopted continuous discovery habits on a mature hotel metasearch product. Despite existing user-focus rituals, the team tended to jump to solutions and rely on A/B testing, which limited their understanding of problems. After leadership buy-in and training, they began mapping opportunities with an opportunity solution tree, combined with JTBD and regular user interviews. The result was new user needs surfaced, easier prioritization of stakeholder requests, aligned squads, clearer quarterly planning, and less wasted solution work. The story shows that the habit takes time, and that perfection is not the goal.

01Key takeaways

• Build continuous discovery as a habit, expecting it to feel like extra work before benefits appear.
• Map solutions to clear opportunities before building or A/B testing them to reduce waste.
• Use the opportunity solution tree to evaluate stakeholder requests against the desired outcome.
• Combine JTBD maps with interview insights, since each framework strengthens the other.
• Drill into users' stories with follow-up questions and tasks, because users rarely state needs directly.
• Accept that a perfect opportunity solution tree does not exist; aim for one that is helpful.

02Key sections

Starting point at trivago

The Search & Flow team had a mature product and good user-focused rituals, but they often skipped deep problem understanding and leaned heavily on A/B testing of solutions.

Getting buy-in and training

Leadership support and the Product Discovery Fundamentals course, plus earlier exposure to continuous discovery ideas, gave the team the push to change how they worked.

Mapping opportunities

The team committed to weekly interviews, a product trio meeting to extract opportunities, and an opportunity solution tree as a central map of decisions.

Early obstacles

Structuring the tree took many iterations, integrating it with JTBD took effort, and interview skills and follow-up questions had to be developed to surface real needs.

Results and lessons

Opportunity mapping revealed hidden trust issues with filters, improved stakeholder discussions, aligned squads, and reduced wasted solution work, with advice to commit long-term and embrace messiness.

03From the post

“A lot of product teams claim to be focused on their users. They might even have regular steps in their processes that remind them to put their users’ needs first. But even if this is the case, there’s always more they can do to improve. This is why Teresa”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.