An Overview of the Product Discovery Process

Now that you have understood the “what” and the “why”  behind product discovery, let’s understand the most crucial step - “how”.

The product discovery process from a product manager's perspective involves several key stages to ensure that the right product is being built to meet user needs and market demands.

When planning and structuring an upcoming Product Discovery, it's best to avoid jumping straight into day-to-day tactics.

Begin with a broader perspective and progressively narrow your focus.

Here’s an outline of a more narrowed-down product discovery process.

Open the Pandora's Box → Understand the “problem” space

Worst practice: Skipping problem validation and going straight to a solution

Well, you can’t jump into the solution space without uncovering the problem space.

So, by default - this is stage 1 of the product discovery process

As product managers, you often come across situations where multiple stakeholders in your team, ask you to build specific features just because they saw someone else doing it for their customers. But this is often case of focusing on the outcome - which is good - but without any emphasis on the actual problem space.

And at times, stakeholders - including your customers - don’t trust your ability in delivering the right solution even if you have planned specific features based on what your competitors have done.

The result? You are simply building a feature-factory for your product without defining the problem your customers are facing.

The solution here is to build an alignment with multiple stakeholders early on - be it internal team, customers, or other stakeholders of your product. And the ultimate goal would be to establish a profound, immediate understanding of your users' requirements.

Now, let’s jump into how you can achieve this -

• For new evidence, run comprehensive customer interviews with different sets of users (both actual and potential). These could be champion users of your product, prospects who are using a competitor’s product, churned users who left using your product.
• Pre-requisite → Clearly define your research questions based on your most critical product areas. And adopt multiple approaches (direct and indirect observations) to collect more evidences.
• For existing evidence, centralize existing sources of user inputs coming in from different sources in a single repository for detailed analysis. These could be your feedback channels including (but not limited to) Intercom/ Zendesk for support tickets, Slack/ MS Teams for communications, Gong/ Avoma for sales calls, customer portals and so on.
• Pre-requisite →  Make sure you connect your top active sources of user feedback.
• Automate everything when it comes to capturing voice of the customer. Keep the stream of feedback coming in from your top sources automatically by establishing certain tagging systems. After all, it’s a continuous discovery and not a one-time activity.

The key to successful product discovery is empathy for your users. It's about grasping their pain points, desires, and behaviours.

Define your Insights → Validate the important actionables

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Once you gather evidence around the problem space, it’s time to put on your analytical hats.

In the product discovery process, instead of diving straight into building, it’s crucial to first validate assumptions. This is where hypotheses and insights experimentation come into play.

It’s time to initiate stage 2 of the process.

This product discovery phase entails examining the data and customer insights collected during the research phase to pinpoint recurring patterns, and eventually validating what to build next.

Having voice of the customer in a place is one thing, but making sense of that VoC, getting the right scoops out of it and understanding the actual problem space is the ultimate goal of any ideal product discovery process.

After all, insights are a key deciding factor for the features that go into your roadmap. Without them, you are building nothing but yet another feature factory.

As Marty Cagan rightly puts it:

“It's all about solving problems, not implementing features. Conventional product roadmaps are all about output. Strong teams know it's not only about implementing a solution but ensuring that solution solves the underlying problem. It's about business results.”

Here’s what you need to do as a product manager —

• Identifying and prioritizing common themes in the feedback data is a crucial step in successfully analyzing and acting on customer feedback. This process aids in determining which areas need immediate attention and which can be planned for future consideration.
• Note: One way to define themes will be to categorize these into bigger buckets such as Customer Needs, Customer Desires & Customer Pain points. And then further classify into —
• • Product Usage Feedback
  • Feature Requests
  • Complaints & Bug Reports
  • Praise or Appreciation
  • Sales Objections
  • Customer Churn reasons
• and much more.

The next step would be to analyze these categories to identify recurring topics. This method helps in pinpointing specific product areas that need your attention.

By thoroughly exploring customer stories & emotions combined with analyses of key product areas, businesses can unearth valuable insights that lead to significant improvements and build stronger customer relationships.

• Integrate your customer-data into your product discovery platform and leverage user segmentation to take a more data-driven decision for your next steps.
• Consider factors such as the number of users reporting a particular issue and the importance of a feature request to the core functionality of your product for a specific user segment. This approach ensures that you address the most pressing concerns that impact revenue.
• Formulate testable hypotheses based on these customer insights. Begin with a clear assumption, such as "We believe that by adding feature X, users will achieve Y."
• Next, define the metrics that will indicate success or failure, ensuring they are specific and measurable. Finally, establish a set time frame for testing the hypothesis, allowing for a thorough evaluation of the results within a designated period.
• And finally, design and conduct experiments to validate hypotheses. It can be a prototype, a minimum viable product (MVP), or a feature within an existing product.

Choose a representative group of users to test the hypothesis, ensuring they accurately reflect your target audience. Collect data by monitoring user interactions, gathering feedback, and tracking the specified metrics. After the testing period, analyze the results to determine whether the hypothesis is validated or refuted, and whether you need to proceed with the actual product development.

Understanding the problem space and validating through insights are the two cornerstones of an ideal product discovery process.

As product managers, it is essential to stay connected with customers, consistently gather feedback, and continuously iterate on the product based on the insights.

Plan a Discovery-led Roadmap → Set milestones to execute the launch

Now that you’ve understood the problem space and validated your insights, it’s time to translate these findings into a strategic, discovery-led product roadmap.

This roadmap acts as a guide for your team, helping prioritize features and initiatives that align with the needs and pain points of your users.

• Define clear objectives and key Results (OKRs). These provide a framework for setting and tracking goals and outcomes for your product features. Your objectives should align with your company’s vision and strategy, while the key results should be specific, measurable, and time-bound.
• Prioritize these based on impact and effort. Not all features or improvements will have the same impact or require the same effort. Using frameworks like the Impact/Effort Matrix can help prioritize initiatives effectively.
  • High Impact, Low Effort: Quick wins that should be prioritized.
  • High Impact, High Effort: Strategic initiatives that require significant resources but offer substantial benefits.
  • Low Impact, Low Effort: Minor improvements or maintenance tasks.
  • Low Impact, High Effort: These should generally be deprioritized or reevaluated.
• Set actionable timelines in your roadmap with with defined milestones to track progress and keep the team focused. Milestones act as checkpoints to assess progress and make necessary adjustments. Make use of roadmaps based on your use-case:
  • Product portfolio roadmap — ****Choose for managing a diverse product lineup. Perfect for product teams overseeing multiple products, providing a clear view of each product's roadmap.
  • Objective oriented roadmap — ****Use when aligning product features with strategic goals is important. Ideal for product teams ensuring every feature contributes directly to the overall objectives.
  • Status based roadmap — ****Choose when you need a clear view of your product's development journey. Ideal for product teams tracking feature status and progress while ensuring timely releases.
  • Now Next Later roadmap — ****Use this when you want to avoid deadline based delivery. Beneficial for product teams categorizing tasks into immediate, upcoming, and future stages, aiding in strategic planning.
• Note: It’s always beneficial to share roadmap internally to leadership and cross-functional teams.
• • Goal-oriented roadmaps offer a swift way to present a high-level view to the leadership team. This aids in understanding how the product aligns with the overarching goals and objectives of the business.
  • For customer success and sales teams, product portfolio roadmaps and customer impact-focused roadmaps provide valuable insights. These visuals help them assess the potential impact on existing customers or new deals, fostering alignment between product strategies and business goals.
• It’s also a good practice to share a public version of the roadmap with your customers to keep them in loop. It also encourages to transparent communication of the product's future direction.

Close the Feedback Loop → Ensure continuous communication

After planning and executing your discovery-led product roadmap, the final crucial step in the product discovery process is closing the feedback loop. This involves effectively communicating with stakeholders, customers, and your internal team to ensure transparency and continuous improvement.

Closing the feedback loop not only builds trust but also fosters a culture of collaboration and responsiveness.

• Keep users and stakeholders informed about the progress and status of their feedback ensures transparency and keeps them engaged.
  • Use a Public Roadmap: Maintain a public-facing product roadmap where users can see the status of their feedback and upcoming features.
  • Send Release Notes: Regularly update users on the progress of implementing their feedback through emails or in-app notifications.
• Effective communication is not just about broadcasting updates but also about engaging in meaningful conversations.
  • Interactive Platforms: Use platforms like community forums, social media, or live Q&A sessions to interact with users directly.
  • Listen Actively: Show that you are listening by responding promptly and thoughtfully to user queries and comments.

Measure, Measure and Measure!

To ensure the effectiveness of your product discovery process, it is essential to establish metrics and KPIs that can help measure success and areas for improvement.

• Track Engagement Metrics: Monitor metrics such as user participation in feedback sessions, the number of feedback submissions, and engagement rates with feedback-related updates.
• Measure Product Adoption: Evaluate how newly implemented features or changes, driven by user feedback, impact product adoption and usage rates.
• Assess Customer Satisfaction: Use surveys and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge customer satisfaction with the implemented changes and overall product experience.
• Monitor Business Impact: Analyze how the improvements influenced by user feedback contribute to key business outcomes, such as revenue growth, churn reduction, and customer retention.

Final thoughts

By meticulously navigating through understanding the problem space, validating insights, planning a discovery-led product roadmap, and closing the feedback loop with effective communication, product managers can ensure they are consistently aligned with user needs and market demands.

This continuous, iterative process not only fosters a deep empathy for users but also drives meaningful innovations and business outcomes. Remember, the journey of product discovery is ongoing.

Embrace it with a strategic mindset, and your product will not only meet but exceed the expectations of your users, creating lasting value and success.

See next chapter →