Product in Practice: How 2-Way Door Decisions Helped Simply Business Learn Fast

This Product in Practice piece follows the Simply Business product team as they adopted continuous discovery with coaching from Teresa Torres. Their first chosen opportunity, late customer payments, was a real pain point customers complained about, but testing showed customers already handled it themselves and had no interest in third-party solutions, so they killed it within about two weeks. Using continuous interviews and their opportunity solution tree, they quickly picked a new opportunity and ran small, cheap tests. The story matters because it shows that complaints are not always opportunities, and that treating decisions as reversible and gathering 'just enough' evidence speeds learning.

01Key takeaways

• A frequently mentioned pain point is not necessarily a worthwhile opportunity; check whether customers actively seek solutions.
• Treat reversible product decisions as two-way doors and make them quickly, learning from the outcome.
• Define the riskiest assumptions and clear success criteria before running a test so kill-or-keep decisions are easy.
• Use continuous interviews to keep feeding your opportunity solution tree rather than waiting for big research batches.
• Involve engineers early in discovery so they can judge test complexity and suggest cheaper approaches.
• Reserve A/B tests for measuring the impact of a chosen solution, not for validating raw MVPs that may be killed.

02Key sections

Team background and prior struggles

The team, a cross-functional Product Discovery Unit, previously relied on lengthy research and over-tested ideas before killing them. They found that over-thinking slowed progress.

Two-way door decisions

Adopting the idea that reversible choices can be made quickly and tested changed how the team approached decisions and reduced their emotional attachment to solutions.

Testing the late-payments opportunity

Demand tests and remote mockup interviews showed customers already had their own solutions and did not want third parties involved, so the opportunity was dropped.

Picking the next opportunity

Continuous interviewing provided a steady stream of pain points, which the team mapped onto the opportunity tree to identify a new target quickly.

Rapid vetting and experimentation

Defining riskiest assumptions and success criteria up front let the team run unmoderated tests, fake door tests and surveys at high pace, with engineers involved early.

Advice for other teams

The team recommends regular discovery sessions, continuous interviews, reserving A/B tests for rollout, and a cross-team opportunity tree to share learning.

03From the post

“Welcome to the latest installment of Product in Practice! For this post, we spoke with a product team from Simply Business about some of the major lessons they’ve learned since adopting continuous discovery habits like interviewing their customers, questioning their assumptions, and using the opportunity solution tree to guide”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.