Marty Cagan responds to a debate sparked by Don Norman's essay arguing that big societal innovations are driven by technology first and needs later, which Norman frames against heavy upfront user research. Cagan says…
“A clear outcome sets the scope for discovery. It defines how much latitude a team has to explore. It sets a clear measure of success. But many teams struggle to set the right outcome. Whether they have a hard time negotiating with stakeholders, feel pressure to commit to multiple outcomes,”
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion, both discovery coaches, argue that there is no single correct way to do product discovery, because every company, team, and customer base differs. Instead of prescribing one method, they…
Torres argues that thinking of a product as a collection of features is a trap that quietly undermines product quality. A feature-first mindset pulls teams into competitor-chasing, produces me-too offerings, and invites…
This Product in Practice piece profiles how Hemnet, Sweden's largest property portal, adopted continuous discovery through a grassroots start. A User Research Director and a Chief Product Officer describe how one…
Marty Cagan revisits his earlier framing of product success as valuable, usable, and feasible, arguing that the single word 'valuable' hid serious business risk and let product managers overweight customer value. He…
Teresa Torres recaps her talk and fireside chat at Y Oslo 2024 on continuous discovery. She argues discovery is a team activity involving engineers, designers and PMs, that teams should start with the smallest possible…
Teresa Torres argues that product builders consistently overestimate how right they are, drawing on behavioral research and the Heath brothers' book Decisive, which describes four decision-making traps: narrow framing…
Teresa Torres profiles Chi Phan, a senior PM who was asked to evaluate whether her company should build an API to automate a manual order-fulfillment process between consumers, vendors and her company. Chi used internal…
Marty Cagan argues against setting a fixed percentage split between new product development and improving existing products. Instead, every investment, whether new or improvement, should be treated as a product…
Marty Cagan, who popularized the term product discovery, clarifies a common confusion: learning is valuable, but the real goal of discovery is to gain insights, which are learnings a team can act on. He explains that…
Teresa Torres argues that a simple visual structure, the opportunity solution tree, is changing how product teams do discovery. She explains that teams struggled to connect customer research with solution testing, and…
Lenny Rachitsky offers a five-point checklist for deciding when to sunset a product or feature, drawing on his Airbnb experience. The core argument is that a feature failing at least three of the criteria (low usage…
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…
Marty Cagan argues that product teams often use a predictable set of excuses to avoid doing real product discovery, and that these excuses usually reflect a misunderstanding of discovery rather than a genuine…
Cagan argues that product optimization, typically A/B testing and iterative tuning, is often confused with product discovery, and that optimization only makes sense after a team has found product/market fit. He…
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion argue that when shifting to a product operating model, companies should start with a small set of pilot teams rather than training everyone at once, which tends to produce chaos and…
Teresa Torres profiles Gary Clift, a Senior Director of Product for a travel-industry API, who used continuous discovery habits to address why customers were resisting migration to a new version of his company's API…
Marty Cagan answers the most common objections people raise against the idea of empowered engineers, the engineers who take part in product discovery rather than only building what they are handed. He argues that the…
Chris Jones argues that organizational transformation, like product development, should be rolled out incrementally rather than all at once. Because people adopt change at different speeds, a sweeping rollout can…
This Tools of the Trade installment profiles Steve Cheshire, a PM at Pendo, to show how one team runs continuous discovery with a practical tech stack. The core argument is that there is no single correct toolset; the…
Lenny Rachitsky compiles informal Twitter poll results on the software tools product, design, analytics, research, and data teams rely on, plus what early-stage founders buy first and spend most on. The post separates…
Teresa Torres describes rolling out Kindling, a simple idea management app, across her company to make product input more transparent and data-driven. She wanted an easy tool that everyone would use to share and vote on…
Teresa Torres asked members of the Continuous Discovery Habits community to share early mistakes they made when adopting continuous discovery. Three practitioners describe their missteps: a PM who ran discovery without…