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This is your go-to hub for Product Discovery knowledge, bundling the best of videos, newsletters, courses, and templates on the topic. Whether you're new to Product Discovery or seeking to learn advanced strategies and tactics, you'll find everything you need here.
Product Managers seek to provide the most value at a minimum cost and risk to their users. As the development capacity is always limited, you only get to pick a few initiatives per year. Invest in Discovery only if common sense or clear company strategy is not able to give you an answer as to whether a specific product direction is the right one to take. This will allow you to limit risk and grow confidence in your decision.
Applying discovery techniques to every backlog item will end up in the loss of opportunity and a huge increase in cost for any initiative. Thus, Discovery is not a magical solution that will tell you what to do next, but a tool you can invoke to increase the right choice confidence when needed.
→ Here’s an actionable resource by Bart
Come up with ideas like you're right but test them like you're wrong. Remember that product discovery isn't about confirming ideas it's about filtering out the bad ideas. So rather than validating assumptions in discovery seek to prove them wrong. If the idea still looks promising after attempting to falsify it then it's probably worth proceeding with.
Here's a good litmus test: how often do you pivot from or stop an idea as a result of discovery? You should be stopping more ideas than you proceed with.
→ Here’s an actionable resource by Ant
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Want to start a Voice of Customer (VoC) programme but you don't know how? Maybe management needs convincing before you can get additional resources, or it's your very first time - whatever your pickle, the advice is: Start small.
First, identify the objectives of your VoC initiative. What specific insights are you aiming for? This clarity will help guide the scope of your analysis. Next, leverage existing touchpoints. Engage with customer-facing teams - sales, support, and success - to gather anecdotal feedback. These teams are gold mines!
Then, use tools at your disposal to dig into the details. Utilize free or low-cost tools like Google Forms for surveys, and free versions of sentiment analysis tools to analyze customer sentiments. Tools like ChatGPT may also be helpful to highlight and summarize.
Lastly, prioritize. Identify common themes and actionable insights and share these insights across your organization to drive more customer-centric improvements.
Remember, a successful VoC programme is iterative, and this is just the beginning! Start small, learn, and continuously refine your approach.
→ Here’s an actionable resource by Antonia
Discovery principles differ when you're in early-stage startups.Time to value is key to moving fast and creating impact.The goal is to test your assumptions and ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible, without investing too much time, money, or resources at the start.How to do this?1) Iterate with hypotheses & test them meticulously — with tree testing
𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫 - solution <> problem fit
𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 - product <> market fit
𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 - scale to the moon
→ Here’s an actionable resource by Sonakshi
My go-to for discovery is the opportunity solution tree. I approach it in two phases: the first is a deep mapping of problems and key friction points users encounter. This focuses the initial activity on selecting a specific pain point to solve within a wider area, avoiding tackling unnecessarily large problems all at once. Focus in discovery is critical; if a team cannot map out a problem space to specific pain points, it’s a clear indicator they need more research instead of progressing with an underdeveloped understanding.
The second phase involves exploring varied approaches to solutions. I encourage teams to consider multiple approaches to all solutions. This invites creativity and helps them move beyond pre-conceived ideas from the start of the process.
I’ve found this framework keeps focus on high-impact initiatives and helps navigate the complexities of decision-making with confidence.
→ Here’s an actionable resource by Dan
We all know the conventional ways of doing product discovery: speak to customers, understand their problems, prioritize, design solutions, get insights, build an MVP, etc. However, this doesn't give actionable insights and so I want to flip that on its head. Using your industry knowledge and gut, build a quick MVP with low effort, maybe even just a Figma prototype. Then take this to customers and see how they respond.
They'll either tell you that you're way off target or they'll love it. In either case, you'll get valuable and targeted insights on what direction to follow next. Don't rely heavily on Jobs to be Done (JTBD) or the Opportunity Solution Tree at the beginning; those will limit your creativity.
Embrace chaos, test bold ideas, and pivot often based on direct feedback from a group of trusted users. This will lead to genuine innovation. Steve Jobs didn't build the iPhone by asking Blackberry users what they wanted in a smartphone. This radical approach can unlock a niche audience who resonate deeply with a highly differentiated product.
→ Here’s an actionable resource by Aakash
https://medium.com/agileinsider/are-you-confusing-product-discovery-with-research-d488f82a2e9b
https://andreamilan7.medium.com/product-discovery-is-a-mindset-not-a-process-27d05446cf3
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