Getting into the Habit of Continuous Discovery (with Teresa Torres, author "Continuous Discovery Habits")
Jul 20, 2021
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Teresa Torres, product discovery coach and author of 'Continuous Discovery Habits', discusses the benefits of continuous discovery, the importance of staying on top of shifting customer needs, and the challenges of conducting continuous discovery with different types of organizations.
Continuous product discovery and regular customer engagement are crucial for making informed decisions and adapting to changing customer needs.
Including engineers in the continuous discovery process enhances cross-functional collaboration and ensures solutions are developed with the customer in mind.
Deep dives
The Importance of Continuous Product Discovery
In this episode, the guest Teresa Torres discusses the significance of continuous product discovery and emphasizes the need to engage with customers regularly. She highlights the importance of building a strong feedback loop and how it helps in making better decisions about what to build. She also delves into defeating cognitive biases, not just within stakeholders but within the product team itself. By continuously engaging with customers, teams can adapt to changing customer needs and market dynamics, ensuring the creation of great products.
The Continuous Discovery Habits Book
Teresa Torres recently released a book called 'Continuous Discovery Habits.' The book provides actionable insights and practical guidance to help product teams discover products that create value for both customers and businesses. It received positive feedback, with readers appreciating the actionable nature of the content and its focus on evidence-based practices. The book aims to serve product trios, consisting of product managers, designers, and software engineers, helping them collaborate effectively and make informed decisions through the discovery process.
Overcoming Challenges in Implementing Continuous Discovery
One of the challenges discussed in the episode is the perceived difficulty in getting access to and engaging with customers, especially for B2B companies or organizations with relatively small user bases. However, Teresa emphasizes that almost every team can increase the frequency of customer engagement, even if it's not on a weekly basis. She suggests building an infrastructure to support regular interviews, finding ways to connect with customers through sales or customer success teams, or leveraging personal networks. The aim is to overcome biases, gain insights, and address unique customer needs through continuous discovery.
The Role of Engineers in Continuous Discovery
Teresa stresses the importance of involving at least one engineer from the start in the continuous discovery process. By including engineers, cross-functional collaboration is enhanced, and decisions can be made considering technical feasibility and customer-centric perspectives. Engineers have unique insights into what is technologically possible and can identify opportunities beyond the scope of product managers and designers. Their involvement helps align the team's understanding and ensures that solutions are developed with the customer in mind.
An interview with Teresa Torres. Teresa is a product discovery coach who works with a variety of organisations to help bed in good product discovery practices. Her coaching experience led her to write a book on the same topic, which she hopes will inspire product teams around the world to build fast feedback loops and defeat stakeholder bias.
We talk about a lot, including:
Why she decided to write Continuous Discovery Habits, and the feedback she's received so far
What the concept of continuous discovery means in practical terms, and why it's important to stay on top of shifting customer needs
The target audience for the book, and whether it's for product leaders or the sceptical exec team
How ideological battles are not going to win the war for product discovery, and the importance of showing and not telling
How her history in human-centred design, and disappointment at working practices in the real world, ignited her passion for discovery
How cognitive biases can lead to bad product decisions, but how this isn't just down to stakeholders but also affects product teams themselves
The importance of stakeholder management, addressing their own gaps, and using story mapping to uncover those gaps and assumptions
Why you should follow through with an impact analysis when you're inevitably overruled, and uncover their (or your) gaps in understanding
How continuous discovery can work with any type of addressable market, and how few people is too few
The ideal frequency of customer contact, and why the longer you leave it, the more risky your decisions
The critical importance of getting engineers into discovery early and using their knowledge & experience to get to the right solution
And much more!
Buy Continuous Discovery Habits
"In this book, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right. "