““How do we know if we are building the right things?” “We are building feature after feature but to what end?” “How do we know what customers really want or need?" Have you heard these sentiments before? I am hearing them more and more. Underlying each quote is a yearning”
Cagan argues that product teams need two distinct disciplines: Product Discovery, which uses prototyping and user testing to find new valuable, usable, feasible solutions, and Product Optimization, which improves an…
Marty Cagan revisits Henrik Kniberg's skateboard-versus-car MVP article and argues it describes what engineering-only teams can do, not what true cross-functional product teams should do. He contends that a skilled…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams routinely build on untested assumptions, treating hopes as facts, and that this risks building something nobody wants. Using an imagined Caltrain commuter app, she shows how to…
Teresa Torres addresses the most common reader question about her book Continuous Discovery Habits: why user researchers, marketers, data analysts and other roles were not named in the product trio. She explains that…
Teresa Torres argues that discovery teams should be judged by whether their discovery work actually moves a desired product outcome, tracked as absolute progress quarter over quarter rather than percent of a goal. Since…
Teresa Torres argues that many startups treat product management as little more than turning feedback into a feature list, and that the discipline remains underdeveloped. She notes that teams know valuable research…
Teresa Torres and the Continuous Discovery Habits community explore what a product manager should do after inheriting a large, aging product backlog of feature requests and bugs. The discussion rejects both extremes of…
Marty Cagan describes a growing trend where product teams move from batch-style phases to continuous practices in both delivery and discovery. He traces how continuous integration, testing, and deployment have spread…
Teresa Torres argues that B2B and B2C discovery are less different than people assume, since most consumer products also serve multiple stakeholders such as advertisers or content providers. The key issue in enterprise…
Teresa Torres argues that product teams building enterprise software can and should experiment, even though A/B testing is often impractical for them. She points out that experiments are simply procedures for testing a…
This reading-guide post kicks off a monthly book club around Teresa Torres's Continuous Discovery Habits, focusing on Chapter 9, which covers identifying hidden assumptions. The chapter argues that teams should test the…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers often fixate on having the 'right answer,' presenting finished backlogs and roadmaps that stakeholders then override with their own opinions. Her remedy is to show the…
Teresa Torres, who teaches design-based courses at Northwestern, argues that continuous discovery principles extend beyond product work to broader organizational challenges like engagement, team effectiveness, and…
Teresa Torres and community members address a common problem: a stakeholder, such as a CEO, brings a solution idea that is unconnected to the team's current outcome and discovery work. The article argues against simply…
Lenny Rachitsky opens a seven-part B2B startup playbook by examining how successful B2B companies found their original ideas. Drawing on dozens of founder interviews, he argues that a strong B2B idea combines an…
Brainstorming in groups often underperforms because of social loafing, conformity, production blocking, and downward norm setting, yet teams still benefit from the diverse perspectives each member brings. This essay…
Teresa Torres argues that continuous discovery generates a lot of artifacts, and teams often waste effort by creating separate documents for doing, communicating, and archiving work. She recommends using one set of…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers are essentially designers who solve ill-structured problems, which have no single right answer and several competing solutions. Drawing on educational psychologist David…
Marty Cagan reviews Ken Kocienda's memoir Creative Selection, told from the perspective of an engineer who spent about 15 years at Apple and served as tech lead for key efforts, most notably the original iPhone…
Teresa Torres argues that teams under pressure to keep up with continuous customer interviews are turning to generative AI for synthesis, and that this often backfires. The core problem is that AI cannot supply context…
Teresa Torres, a discovery coach, explains that her high-touch coaching is only available to companies willing to invest heavily, so she is designing a lighter-weight course for individual practitioners. She argues that…
Teresa Torres argues that customer interviews often fail because people describe their ideal behavior rather than what they actually do, and their brains readily invent coherent but false explanations. She draws on…
Marty Cagan describes a common remote-work problem in product discovery: teams drift back into passing static artifacts between product manager, designer, and engineers instead of collaborating closely. His proposed fix…