Attractiveness map

Worksheet 2 — Attractiveness Map

Help the team evaluate each opportunity along two dimensions and place it on the map. Use one worksheet per opportunity.

• Potential (Y-axis, "value creation") — how big is this opportunity, regardless of your own ability to capture it. Factors 1–3.
• Challenge (X-axis, "value capture") — how hard will it be for you to succeed and capture value. Factors 4–6.

Mountain analogy: Potential = height of the mountain; Challenge = how steep the climb is. And mind the fog around these mountains — we don't have a crystal ball, so acknowledge the uncertainty rather than scoring as if it weren't there.

The non-negotiable: scoring stays with the team

This skill never decides scores and never auto-aggregates. For each factor: ask the guiding questions, bring in evidence, present the score-challenger agent's critique, then stop and let the team set the score. The "X on the scale" is not the point — understanding the upsides and downsides is. Combine factors into Overall Potential / Overall Challenge qualitatively, never as an average.

Preparation (before scoring)

Do three pieces of homework first (see spec): (1) learn the customers' world ("think like a fish"); (2) map the business environment — value chain + competitors; (3) understand the key milestones to implementation — what you own vs. must build. Start quick & dirty: a first pass yields a list of key assumptions to validate, not final truth.

The six factors (score each separately)

POTENTIAL

1. Compelling reason to buy — Will someone really want our offer and pay for it? This is a necessary condition / potential No-Go — analyse it first.
   • Is there a real unmet need? · Can we provide an effective (whole) solution? · Can we address it (much) better than current solutions — and turn the mirror around: why would customers not prefer your product?
   • Only scoreable "through the eyes of your customers — get out of the building."
2. Market volume — How big is this market, now and soon?
   • What is the current size? · How much will it grow? (units and money; top-down vs. bottom-up; TAM/SAM/SOM; a small market may be a stepping stone.)
3. Economic viability — Is it worthwhile as a business?
   • Sizeable margins? · Customers well-funded enough to pay? · How sticky are customers? (Talk to the economic buyer, not only the user.)

CHALLENGE

4. Implementation obstacles — How hard to create and deliver your offer?
   • Difficulty to develop the product · to access the market / build channels · to raise funding. (Tech teams routinely underestimate go-to-market.)
5. Time to revenues — How long until cash flow from sales?
   • Estimated development time · must you wait for the market to be ready? · expected sales-cycle length.
6. External risk(s) — What in the environment can stand in your way?
   • Threat from competition · dependence on other players/ecosystem · adoption barriers. (Note: no competition can be equally worrying.)

Use the full guiding questions and sub-probes in references/worksheet-2-spec.md and the headline questions in references/six-factors.md.

Scoring scale and confidence

• Qualitative scale: Low → Mid → High → Super High (half-steps low-mid / mid-high optional). Potential on Y, Challenge on X.
• Score both absolute and relative to the other opportunities; keep a consistent time horizon and any weighting consistent across all opportunities.
• Mark confidence per factor with the colour scheme: red = no evidence, orange = some evidence, green = significant evidence. Every red/orange statement becomes an entry on the assumption list.

Procedure per opportunity

1. Create where-to-play/02_attractiveness-map/<opportunity-name>.md by copying the template ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/assets/templates/02_attractiveness-map.md (note: the workspace folder 02_attractiveness-map/ and the template file 02_attractiveness-map.md share a name by design — the folder holds one filled copy per opportunity).

2. Offer a coordinated research pass first — ask the team, and skip it if they decline. Before scoring this opportunity, offer to gather evidence for its factors in one pass. Ask explicitly; if the team says no, go straight to the factor walk (research stays on-demand per factor). If they accept and the Workflow tool is available: run Tier 3 (via the market-research skill → wf-market-research.js) on Market volume and Economic viability, and Tier 2 (deep-research) on the open qualitative factors — Implementation obstacles, Time to revenues, External risks. For Compelling reason to buy, prefer the customer-discovery skill (it is judged through the customer's eyes, not by desk research). Give a one-line qualitative heads-up before the deep runs; no cost/time estimate. Where Workflow is unavailable, the same coverage runs via the Tier-1 market-research subagent per factor. Research the riskiest assumptions first; evidence only — no scores are set here.

3. Walk factor by factor. For each: ask the guiding questions; where market facts are missing, invoke the market-research skill/agent for cited evidence (it flags uncertainty rather than bluffing); run the score-challenger agent to pressure-test the proposed score against the rubric and evidence. For a contested factor, optionally stage a bull/bear debate — persona-explorer argues why Potential is higher / Challenge lower, persona-skeptic argues the opposite — to expose the load-bearing assumptions. Then the team sets the score and the confidence colour, with a one-line reason.

4. Combine into Overall Potential and Overall Challenge qualitatively (discuss, don't average) and record the coordinate.

5. Place the opportunity in a zone on where-to-play/02_map-overview.md:

   Zone	Potential	Challenge	Meaning
   Gold Mine	high	low	ideal but rare
   Moon Shot	high	high	high risk / high return
   Quick Win	low	low	low risk / low return; stepping stone
   Questionable	low	high	usually avoid

6. Validate & learn: build the assumption map (where-to-play/assumptions.md): plot each open assumption by Evidence × Importance; focus on the important, low-evidence ones — ask which hypothesis, if proven wrong, would cause the idea to fail — and start with Compelling reason to buy (the necessary condition, so the riskiest); design the learning journey; re-score and reposition as evidence arrives. Finding a "no-go" is a win, not a failure — a sign you searched broadly and creatively, and you learned it now, before sweat, tears and money.

Once the map holds several opportunities, the team can optionally convene the advisory-board skill for a multi-perspective review of the whole map before moving to Worksheet 3 — it surfaces disagreements and assumptions to test, but never scores or picks a market.

Optional: Worksheet 2B — Where to Impact

For ventures with a social/environmental mission, score impact beforehand with three factors (Problem severity, Pertinent solution, Impact reach), marked with hearts (1–4). See the spec's Worksheet 2B section.

Additional resources

• references/worksheet-2-spec.md — the full normative spec (rules R0–R13, all guiding questions and sub-probes, the 4 zones, validation, AI-for-market-research, Worksheet 2B).
• references/six-factors.md — the six factors with their verbatim headline guiding questions, for quick reference.
• references/examples/augury-ws2.md — a real scored Worksheet 2 (the Augury case) as a few-shot reference.