What a Good Continuous Discovery Team Looks Like [Case Study]

Teresa Torres profiles Amy O'Callaghan (product manager) and Jenn Atkins (product designer) at Snagajob, who were coached in continuous discovery and now run a team that talks to customers weekly and validates work before building it. Before coaching, their team was reorganized every quarter, rushed MVPs out, and treated research as a checkbox, while designers produced reports nobody read. After training, they adopted the opportunity solution tree as a shared map of problems, solutions and assessments, and their sprints now include only validated work. The piece matters because it offers a concrete, real-world picture of what a healthy continuous discovery practice looks like and what it changes for PMs, designers and developers.

01Key takeaways

• Commit to a steady cadence of customer contact, even if it means finding scrappier recruiting channels than your usual ones.
• Use an opportunity solution tree as a visual shared map that helps stakeholders see the thinking behind your decisions.
• Systematically assess and test the risks of each solution rather than relying on hunches.
• Treat the PM-designer-engineer triad as a true partnership so discovery has a shared understanding across disciplines.
• Share discovery findings widely in regular, visible forums so the wider organization builds trust and momentum.
• Expect the habit change to take sustained effort, and adapt the practice to your team's realities rather than copying it exactly.

02Key sections

The starting point

The team had frequent reorganizations, little time with customers, and discovery that happened only after solutions were already dictated. Designers felt research was disconnected from what was actually built.

What coaching changed

A weekly customer-contact habit, the opportunity tree, and systematic risk assessment shifted the team toward understanding problems before pitching solutions. The triad of PM, designer and engineer became a real discovery partnership.

Ongoing practices

The team runs frequent small experiments, uses the tree in daily and monthly cycles, shares discovery in squad updates and quarterly sessions, and evangelizes the method across the product org.

Results

Sprints contain only validated work, dual discovery and delivery run in parallel, OKRs are built from discovered opportunities, and the team has earned stakeholder trust and more stable squads.

Advice to other teams

The commitment is significant but strategically important; teams should adapt the practice to their context, keep communicating results, and gain leadership buy-in.

03From the post

“One of my favorite parts of Mind the Product London this past fall was meeting a product manager and a designer who I had coached in the prior year. We met for afternoon tea and to my surprise they gushed about our time working together. They had so much they”

04Frameworks mentioned

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