Identification must check that the key research evidence is covered

What it is

Moving from a corpus to an opportunity list is not free composition. An evidence coverage check requires that every finding the team treats as key—recurring failures, high-cost events, clearly unmet outcomes—has a place on the list: it becomes an opportunity, merges into one, or is parked in writing with a reason. A finding with no place is an orphan. An opportunity with no finding is a drop-in.

Why it happens

Synthesis meetings have their own attention bias: the most recent session, the most fluent participant, the feature someone already wants to build, all push some material onto the list and leave other material in the notes. The coverage check reverses the direction: from the evidence index toward the list, not from brainstorming toward the corpus. Orphan findings are often counterexamples that do not fit the current narrative, minority groups, or outcome gaps with no ready solution. Drop-in opportunities usually come from the roadmap poured backward. Either hole makes “research findings” a false name.

Studying it

Freeze a table of key evidence first: ID, source session, claim, strength. After identification, map both ways: each evidence item to an opportunity or a parking reason; each opportunity back to evidence IDs. Unmapped evidence must not vanish from the report; it goes on the parking table. Audit parking reasons that are only “hard to build” or “we are not interested”—that is filtering, not coverage. Report the coverage rate together with the parking table.

Where it stops holding

Not every quote must become an opportunity. Coverage targets claims marked key in advance or during analysis, not every raw line. New opportunities may appear during the check; that is a legitimate product of coverage work. If the corpus never included a kind of user, the check cannot invent evidence; it can only mark the hole.

Applying it

• Leave time at the end of the opportunity working session for the mapping; do not take “we all agree on these items” as coverage done.
• Map in a table, not in memory; send unmapped items to everyone after the meeting, not only to the facilitator.
• Keep the parking table public, stating whether an item is parked for thin evidence, out of scope, or duplicate.
• If a product decision cites a list item with no corresponding evidence, return it to identification; do not take it onto the roadmap.

Related

• Same group: Q4.15.1 An opportunity is an unmet outcome, not a solution already chosen · Q4.15.3 One opportunity can map to mutually exclusive directions; do not narrow early · Q4.15.4 Record the tradeoff when business priority and user-value ranking conflict
• Adjacent: Q4.09 Ranking opportunities · Q4.02 Coding and thematic analysis
• Search terms: evidence coverage · orphan finding · synthesis audit