Insights from the CDH Benchmark Survey: How Are Teams Adopting Discovery Habits?

Teresa Torres reports on the second part of her inaugural CDH Benchmark Survey, which asked product teams about their discovery habits. She argues that many people doubt that continuous discovery exists in practice simply because they have never seen it, and the survey shows real teams do adopt these practices, though unevenly. Results cover outcome setting, customer contact, story-based interviewing, synthesizing interviews into opportunities, opportunity solution trees, idea generation, assumption testing, and discovery tooling. The findings highlight both encouraging progress and persistent gaps, such as teams lacking clear outcomes, engineers missing from interviews, and few teams testing assumptions regularly. The piece matters because it gives product leaders a grounded picture of which habits are common and which remain rare.

01Key takeaways

• Anchor discovery to a clear outcome and hold it over multiple quarters rather than chasing several at once.
• Aim for a weekly story-based interview habit, since regular contact with customers is the keystone of discovery.
• Include engineers, designers, and the product manager in customer interviews so the whole trio shares the same evidence.
• Source opportunities from customer interviews and observations, and verify internal ideas against what customers actually say.
• Run frequent assumption tests and be willing to discard or iterate on solutions rather than building the first idea.
• Keep opportunity solution trees and experience maps living documents by updating them every few interviews.

02Key sections

Shifting from outputs to outcomes

Most respondents work with a mix of outputs and metrics, and many still juggle several outcomes at once. Torres argues that focusing on a single outcome, held over several quarters, produces greater impact.

Customer exposure and story-based interviews

Many teams talk to customers regularly, but far fewer conduct structured story-based interviews. Only a minority show a sustained weekly interviewing habit, though some are building streaks.

Synthesizing interviews and trio participation

Most teams identify opportunities after interviews, but few create interview snapshots or include all product trio members. Engineers are the most frequently absent participants.

Visuals and opportunity solution trees

Experience maps and story maps are the most common visuals, and many teams update their opportunity solution trees regularly. Still, most teams source opportunities from assumptions or internal stakeholders rather than customers, and few limit their work to a small number of opportunities.

Ideation, assumption testing, and tools

Idea generation is broadly collaborative, but most teams run few assumption tests and rarely discard or iterate on solutions. Teams commonly have access to sales notes and digital whiteboards, while behavioral analytics and research repositories are less widespread.

03From the post

““Product thought leaders talk about an ideal way of working. Nobody actually works that way.” I can’t tell you how many times I hear this sentiment on Twitter and LinkedIn. And I hate it. I realize that many product people have never worked in a product trio, don’t”

04Frameworks mentioned

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