Continuous Discovery Team
coaching with Teresa Torres
coaching with Teresa Torres
Outcome-oriented, not output-oriented.
This means that a product team isn't done when they ship code, they are done when the code they shipped had the intended impact. Continuous discovery isn't about deciding to build feature A, B, or C, it's about continuing to experiment and learn until we reach our desired outcome—a quantitative goal that we can clearly measure.
This means that a product team isn't done when they ship code, they are done when the code they shipped had the intended impact. Continuous discovery isn't about deciding to build feature A, B, or C, it's about continuing to experiment and learn until we reach our desired outcome—a quantitative goal that we can clearly measure.
Truly collaborate.
This means the product manager, the design lead, and the tech lead come together to make team decisions, leveraging all of their unique experiences and expertise.
This means the product manager, the design lead, and the tech lead come together to make team decisions, leveraging all of their unique experiences and expertise.
Committed to regular touch points with customers by the team building the product.
This means they don't outsource their research to a centralized research team, they don't rely on marketing or sales to tell them about customer needs, nor do they stare at dashboards all day. They get some time with the people using their software.
This means they don't outsource their research to a centralized research team, they don't rely on marketing or sales to tell them about customer needs, nor do they stare at dashboards all day. They get some time with the people using their software.
Visual synthesizers.
This means that the team works diligently to develop and maintain a shared understanding across their team and their organization. You'll learn how to visually synthesize what you are learning using experience maps, customer journey maps, user story maps, and opportunity solution trees.
This means that the team works diligently to develop and maintain a shared understanding across their team and their organization. You'll learn how to visually synthesize what you are learning using experience maps, customer journey maps, user story maps, and opportunity solution trees.
Deliberate about discovering opportunities and solutions.
This means that the product team doesn't jump straight to generating solutions, but instead spends time in the problem space, comparing and contrasting the value of different opportunities, and making strategic decisions about where to invest. They also diligently match their solutions to the opportunities they've chosen to target and can use their Opportunity Solution Tree to explain their thinking to others.
This means that the product team doesn't jump straight to generating solutions, but instead spends time in the problem space, comparing and contrasting the value of different opportunities, and making strategic decisions about where to invest. They also diligently match their solutions to the opportunities they've chosen to target and can use their Opportunity Solution Tree to explain their thinking to others.
Customer's Experience Drawings
Using visuals in the creative process is important. It helps you think.
It’s easy to consider ideas in your head. It’s when you sit down to put them on paper that the work becomes challenging. It requires getting specific. It requires making ideas concrete. You have to define something before you can draw it.
When we hold our ideas in our head, we spend our mental energy on retaining the idea itself.
When we draw our ideas, they talk back to us.
Essentially, externalizing our ideas helps us think.
Continuous Interviewing
Interviewing is a key element of a continuous discovery strategy. It's what helps us form our theory of how our customer's world works. This theory is what enables us to develop viable solutions.
The key to a successful interview is to focus on collecting specific stories, rather than asking general questions.
For example:
- Don't ask, "How do you decide which jeans to buy?" Ask, "Tell me about the last time you bought a pair of jeans."
- Don't ask, "Do you take public transportation to work?" Ask, "Tell me about your commute to work this morning."
- Don't ask, "What do you typically eat?" Ask, "Tell me about your meals yesterday."
The More Visual the More Memorable It Will Be
The goal of creating snapshots is to help you remember what you learned in the interview. We don't want to merely capture simple facts. Rather, we want to create an emotional connection with the participant so we remember the stories they told.
The cliche, "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" is true. The more visual your snapshot, the easier it will be to jump back into that interview.
Clear Desired Outcome
Product teams have long been managed by outputs—success is defined by delivering a set of features. The challenge with this approach is that we don't follow through to ensure that our features are successful. The best way to avoid this trap is to take the time to define an outcome that if you achieved it would create value for your business.
Opportunity Solution Tree
It’s a simple way of visually representing how you plan to reach a desired outcome. It helps you to make your implicit assumptions explicit.
We tend to think in solutions. We all do it.
the simple visual that helps us externalize our thinking. That externalization helps us to examine our thinking, it allows others to critique our thinking, and it can guide us toward what to do next.
#1: Good product discovery starts with a clear desired outcome.
#2: Opportunities should emerge from generative research.
#3: Solutions can and should come from everywhere (as long as they are bounded by an opportunity).
#4: Experiment to evaluate and evolve your solutions.
the simple visual that helps us externalize our thinking. That externalization helps us to examine our thinking, it allows others to critique our thinking, and it can guide us toward what to do next.
#1: Good product discovery starts with a clear desired outcome.
#2: Opportunities should emerge from generative research.
#3: Solutions can and should come from everywhere (as long as they are bounded by an opportunity).
#4: Experiment to evaluate and evolve your solutions.
The opportunity solution tree is deceptively simple. As a visual, it’s pretty straightforward. However, when you start playing with it, you’ll realize that mapping the opportunity space is harder than it looks.
So why do it?
There are several reasons why you want to take the time to map the opportunity space. Mapping the opportunity space will help you:
- Develop a deep understanding of what you know about your customer and communicate that understanding to the rest of your organization.
- Increase the likelihood that you are working on the most impactful opportunity at any moment in time.
- Turn big intractable opportunities into a series of smaller, more solvable opportunities.
- Deliver value iteratively over time in a truly Agile way.
Generate Better Ideas
When it's time to generate ideas, we tend to generate ideas for everything and anything we might do. The output is a long list of ideas that we now have to prioritize against each other.
One of the advantages of using the opportunity solution tree is that it can help us narrow the focus of our idea generation, solving our prioritization challenge.
When you are done generating ideas, review each idea on your list and make sure it addresses your target opportunity.
As a group, dot vote to determine your top 3 ideas. Vote for the ideas that you think best address your target opportunity.
Story Map and Identify Assumptions
we want to test our assumptions, not our ideas. Testing our assumptions allows us to move quickly, evolve ideas that aren't working, and collect building blocks that help us identify future solutions.
Assumptions are the things that need to be true in order for our ideas to work.
Start by assuming that your solution already exists. You aren't story mapping what it will take to implement your idea. You are story mapping how people will get value from it once it exists.
We don't want to just test desirability, usability, and feasibility assumptions. We also need to surface viability and ethical assumptions.
Assumption mapping
Evaluate which of your assumptions are the most risky and therefore need to be tested. Take your list assumptions and do the assumption mapping exercise.
Draw the horizontal axis first and map known vs unknown. Then draw the vertical axis and map important vs unimportant.
Focus on the top right quadrant for near term experimentation. Create evaluative experiments from these important and unknown assumptions.
Assumption Testing / Evaluate Evidence
Work with your two riskiest assumptions from each of your three solutions, for a total of six assumptions.
What data would convince you this was no longer your riskiest assumption?
What data would convince you this was no longer your riskiest assumption?
What’s the easiest way to collect that data in the next week? What could you do today?
The best experiments simulate a part of the experience. We don't want to build the whole feature or mockup the entire interface. We want to look at the teeniest that we can simulate to test this very specific assumption.
