“The opportunity solution tree is a visual representation of your continuous discovery work. It helps you keep track of your high-level outcomes, the unmet needs, desires, and pain points (or what I collectively refer to as “opportunities”) you’re hearing about from customers, the solutions you’re considering, and”
This Product in Practice story describes how Ellen Juhlin, a senior product director at Orion Labs, brought engineers into continuous discovery. Engineers often see product work as order-taking, but their technical…
Teresa Torres interviews Hope Gurion, Chief Product Officer at CareerBuilder, about how she built product management, UX, and analytics functions at a company that previously lacked them. Gurion describes shifting her…
Teresa Torres argues that teams should separate their research questions (what they want to learn) from their interview questions (what they actually ask), because people answer direct questions unreliably due to…
Sonja Martin, a product manager at tails.com, describes how her cross-functional team repeatedly refined their desired outcome. They began with 90-day retention, a useful North Star but too lagging and noisy to guide…
Marty Cagan argues that product discovery and rapid test-and-learn techniques, which startups use, apply equally to established companies. Startups have no legacy to protect, so they can take big risks cheaply…
Marty Cagan argues that market research tools such as surveys, analytics, focus groups, site visits and usability testing are valuable but have clear limits in product work. Tensions between marketing and product teams…
Teresa Torres uses a product manager and designer dilemma to argue that teams waste time designing a whole near-term vision upfront, because their assumptions about being right are usually wrong. She contends that…
Teresa Torres argues there is no single perfect tool for recruiting customer interview participants in continuous discovery; the best tool is the one a team will actually use. The article walks through three steps…
Cagan argues that teams who genuinely value product discovery still waste time when they lack a plan, so they should write a Product Discovery Plan spelling out who is involved, what must be done, what resources are…
Teresa Torres introduces Hope Gurion's approach to representing customer segments on an opportunity solution tree, noting that structuring the opportunity space is hard when customers are diverse, especially in B2B…
This reading guide introduces the June installment of a book club around Continuous Discovery Habits, centered on Chapter 7, which argues that product strategy belongs in the opportunity space rather than the solution…
Marty Cagan argues that the essential nature of technology-powered products is hard to grasp until you've worked on a strong product team, and that most people think they understand it but don't. He highlights a rarely…
Marty Cagan argues that many product teams delay validating their ideas with real customers until it is too late, and that this delay is a common cause of disastrous product results. He notes that people often agree in…
Marty Cagan contrasts strong product teams with weak ones, drawing on years of working with both top technology companies and struggling ones. He argues the differences are not minor but span leadership behavior, team…
Teresa Torres shares four examples from coach Ellen Juhlin of using in-app surveys to sustain customer touchpoints as part of continuous discovery. Across different products, Ellen tried a Mixpanel pop-up, an onboarding…
Marty Cagan argues that many product teams spend their discovery effort on usability and performance fixes when the real problem is that users do not see why the product is worth using at all. Polishing a workflow or…
Marty Cagan describes the most common confusions he sees in product teams, drawn from a dinner conversation with product leaders who recognized the same patterns. He argues that product teams should discover solutions…
This podcast episode, hosted by Teresa Torres with guest Petra Wille, examines whether product discovery differs fundamentally between B2B and B2C products. The hosts argue the core principles are largely consistent…
Marty Cagan argues that product managers who are forbidden from talking directly with users should push hard to change that policy, and if they cannot, should consider leaving for a company where they can do their job…
Lily Smith, Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, describes how she set out to add deliberate practice to product learning after realizing that reading and talks were not enough to change how she and her peers work…
Marty Cagan argues that the common belief that great products come from listening to customers is a myth for technology products, because customers often cannot imagine what is possible or what they want until they see…
Teresa Torres introduces the product trio: a product manager, designer, and engineer who share responsibility for product decisions rather than handing work off in sequence. She argues the traditional handoff model…
Marty Cagan follows up on an earlier list of product manager problem areas with five more common pitfalls. He argues that many teams play defense, acting risk-averse and protecting ground instead of moving forward…