What Exactly Is Product Discovery? Product Discovery 101

Product Discovery is the most important area for a Product Manager. In recent 5 years, its popularity has exploded (+700% in Google Trends).

Unfortunately, it is still largely misunderstood. So here is Product Discovery 101:

1. Why do we need Product Discovery?
2. Dual-Track Agile
3. What's inside Product Discovery?
4. Initial vs. Continuous Product Discovery

Now in detail:

1. Why do we need Product Discovery?

According to Marty Cagan,

„The first truth is that at least half of your ideas are just not going to work” - Inspired

This happens because, for every idea, there are 5 risks that can materialize:

• Value. Will it create value for the customers?

• Usability. Will users figure out how to use it?

• Viability. Can our business support it?

• Feasibility. Can it be done (technology)?

• Ethic. Should we do it? Are there any ethical considerations?

Agile did an amazing job in delivering software in small iterations, inspecting, and adapting. And asking the question, “are we building the right thing”? It allows you to deliver value faster and adjust the direction along the way.

Agile Delivery using Scrum

But it turns out most ideas do not work. Thus, learning by delivering results in huge waste and rework.

Fortunately, there is a better way.

2. Dual-Track Agile

Jeff Patton, Marty Cagan, and others in the Agile/product space have been big proponents of an approach called Dual-Track Development or Dual-Track Agile.

In this setup, there are two streams that run in parallel:

• The goal of Product Discovery is to discover the product to build.

• The goal of Product Delivery is to deliver that product to the market.

Dual-Track Agile

This significantly limits waste and rework in Product Delivery (e.g., Scrum).

3. What’s inside Product Discovery?

Product Discovery: Double Diamond and Design Thinking

There are two groups of activities:

• Exploring the Problem Space to understand and define opportunities (problems, needs, desires):

  • Performing customer interviews (e.g., weekly, as defined by Teresa Torres).

  • Learning from usage analytics (collecting and analyzing data on how users interact with a product or service, e.g., Pendo.io).

  • Learning from data analytics (analyzing large datasets to uncover trends, patterns, and relationships, e.g., Microsoft Power BI).

  • Leveraging other tools: customer surveys, market trends, and benchmarking.

  • Mapping opportunities (e.g., Opportunity Solution Tree, as defined by Teresa Torres).

• Exploring the Solution Space:

  • Explore possible solutions to those problems (ideas).

  • Formulate testable assumptions related to those ideas.

  • Run experiments to prove or disprove those assumptions.

Product Discovery results in a validated Product Backlog. In particular, high-risk assumptions are tested before the implementation.

Tips:

• This is not a task for a single person. The Product Trio (Product Manager, Designer, and at least one Engineer) perform Product Discovery together. We need all those perspectives.

• You should prioritize Opportunities, not Ideas.

• A great way to generate assumptions is using Use Story Map.

• You should test only high-risk Assumptions.

4. Initial vs. Continuous Product Discovery

The Initial Product Discovery runs without Product Delivery. Its goal is to discover the product that has a chance of achieving Product-Market Fit.

The Initial Product Discovery may result in a Product Vision, Product Strategy, and initially validated Business Model that can serve as a base for investment decisions.

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Books and materials

Initial Product Discovery

Free materials:

• The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen (YouTube)

• Jobs-to-be-Done by Tony Ulwick (YouTube)

Recommended books:

• Jobs-to-be-Done by Tony Ulwick - Discover customer clusters and prioritize customer needs

• Value Proposition Design by Alexander Osterwalder

• Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder

• The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen - MVP Prototype to quickly validate key assumptions about the business model and get maximum learning with minimal effort

Continuous Product Discovery

Free materials:

• Introduction to Modern Product Discovery - Teresa Torres (YouTube)

• Opportunity solution tree (article): https://www.producttalk.org/2016/08/opportunity-solution-tree/

• Jeff Gothelf: Hypothesis prioritization canvas: https://jeffgothelf.com/blog/the-hypothesis-prioritization-canvas/

• SVPG (Marty Cagan) on prototypes: https://www.svpg.com/flavors-of-prototypes/ 

Recommended books:

• Inspired by Marty Cagan

• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

• Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres

• Escaping The Build Trap by Melissa Perri

• Sprint by Jake Knapp

• Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke