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Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value…
Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business Value
PART 1: WHAT IS CONTINUOUS DISCOVERY?
Chapter One: The What and Why of Continuous Discovery
The Evolution of Modern Product Discovery
Co create with your customers
Who This Book Is For
product trio
designers
software engineers
product managers
The Prerequisite Mindsets
Outcome-oriented
Customer-centric
Collaborative
Visual
Experimental
Continuous
A Working Definition of Continuous Discovery
Chapter Two: A Common Framework for Continuous Discovery
Begin With the End in Mind
The Challenge of Driving Outcomes
The Underlying Structure of Discovery
opportunity solution tree (OST)
OSTs Resolve the Tension Between Business Needs and Customer Needs
OSTs Help Build and Maintain a Shared Understanding Across Your Trio
OSTs Help Product Trios Adopt a Continuous Mindset
OSTs Unlock Better Decision-Making
OSTs Unlock Faster Learning Cycles
OSTs Build Confidence in Knowing What to Do Next
OSTs Unlock Simpler Stakeholder Management
Building Out Your Opportunity Solution Tree
OST is the roadmap?
PART 2: THE CONTINUOUS DISCOVERY HABITS
Chapter Three: Focusing on Outcomes Over Outputs
Why Outcomes?
Exploring Different Types of Outcomes
Business outcomes
lagging indicators
Improve 90 day retention
Product outcomes
leading indicators
Increasing perceived value of the product
Traction outcomes
Tracks usage of specific features
Outcomes Are the Result of a Two-Way Negotiation
Do You Need S.M.A.R.T. Goals?
A Guide for Product Trios :check:
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Pursuing too many outcomes at once
Ping-ponging from one outcome to another
3 quarters - Stick to something for at least 3 quarters
Setting individual outcomes instead of product-trio outcomes
Choosing an output as an outcome
Focusing on one outcome to the detriment of all else
Discovering Opportunities
Chapter Four: Visualizing What You Know
Set the Scope of Your Experience Map
Start Individually to Avoid Groupthink
Experience Maps Are Visual, Not Verbal
Explore the Diverse Perspectives on Your Team
Co-Create a Shared Experience Map
Start by turning each of your individual maps into a collection of nodes and links
Create a new map that includes all of your individual nodes
Collapse similar nodes together.
Determine the links between each node
Add context
Avoid Common Anti-Patterns
Getting bogged down in endless debate
Using words instead of visuals
Moving forward as if your map is true
Forgetting to refine and evolve your map as you learn more
Chapter Five: Continuous Interviewing
The Challenges With Asking People What They Need
Distinguish Research Questions From Interview Questions
Excavate the Story
You Won’t Always Get What You Want
Synthesize as You Go
Draw the Stories You Collect
Interview Every Week
Automate the Recruiting Process
Recruit Participants While They Are Using Your Product or Service
Ask Your Customer-Facing Colleagues to Recruit
Interview Your Customer Advisory Board
Interview Together, Act Together
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Relying on one person to recruit and interview participants
Asking who, what, why, how, and when questions
Interviewing only when you think you need it
Sharing what you learned by sending out pages of notes and/or sharing a recording
Stopping to synthesize a set of interviews
Chapter Six: Mapping the Opportunity Space
The Power of Opportunity Mapping
Taming Opportunity Backlogs
The Power of Trees
Identifying Distinct Branches
Take an Inventory of the Opportunity Space
Add Structure to Each Branch
Just Enough Structure
Avoid Common Anti-Patterns
Opportunities framed from your company’s perspective
Vertical opportunities
Opportunities have multiple parent opportunities
Opportunities are not specific
Opportunities are solutions in disguise
Capturing feelings as opportunities
Chapter Seven: Prioritizing Opportunities, Not Solutions
Focus on One Target Opportunity at a Time
Using the Tree to Aid Decision Making
Assessing a Set of Opportunities
Opportunity sizing
Market factors
Company factors
Customer factors
Embrace the Messiness
Two-Way Door Decisions
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Delaying a decision until there is more data
Over-relying on one set of factors at the cost of the others
Working backwards from your expected conclusion
Discovering Solutions
Chapter Eight: Supercharged Ideation
Quantity Leads to Quality
The Problem With Brainstorming
Getting Unstuck
Putting It All Into Practice
Review your target opportunity
Generate ideas alone
Share ideas across your team
Repeat steps 2 and 3
Evaluating Your Ideas
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Not including diverse perspectives
Generating too many variations of the same idea
Limiting ideation to one session
Selecting ideas that don’t address the target opportunity
Chapter Nine: Identifying Hidden Assumptions
Be Prepared to Be Wrong
Types of Assumptions
Desirability assumptions
Viability assumptions
Feasibility assumptions
Usability assumptions
Ethical assumptions
Story Map to Get Clarity
Start by assuming the solution already exists
Identify the key actors
Map out the steps each actor has to take for anyone to get value from the solution
Sequence the steps horizontally over time
Use Your Story Maps to Generate Assumptions
Conduct a Pre-Mortem
Walk the Lines of Your Opportunity Solution Tree
Explore Potential Harm
Mix and Match the Methods
Prioritizing Assumptions
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Not generating enough assumptions
Phrasing your assumptions such that you need them to be false
Not being specific enough
Favoring one category at the cost of other categories
Chapter Ten: Testing Assumptions, Not Ideas
Working With Sets of Ideas
Simulate an Experience, Evaluate Behavior
Early Signals vs. Large-Scale Experiments
Understanding False Positives and False Negatives
A Quick Word on Science
Running Assumption Tests
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Overly complex simulations
Using percentages instead of specific numbers when defining evaluation criteria
Not defining enough evaluation criteria
Testing with the wrong audience
Designing for less than the best-case scenario
Chapter Eleven: Measuring Impact
Don’t Measure Everything
Instrument Your Evaluation Criteria
Measure Impact on Your Desired Outcome
Revisiting Different Types of Outcomes
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Getting stuck trying to measure everything
Hyperfocusing on your assumption tests and forgetting to walk the lines of your opportunity solution tree
Forgetting to test the connection between your product outcome and your business outcome
Chapter Twelve: Managing the Cycles
Simply Business: Not All Opportunities Need Solutions
CarMax: The Importance of Now, Next, Future
FCSAmerica: Balancing Customer Value With Business Needs
Snagajob: Iterating Through Small Opportunities for Big Impact
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Overcommitting to an opportunity
Avoiding hard opportunities
Drawing conclusions from shallow learnings
Giving up before small changes have time to add up
Chapter Thirteen: Show Your Work
Don’t Jump Straight to Your Conclusions
Slow Down and Show Your Work
Generate and Evaluate Options
Common Anti-Patterns
Telling instead of showing
Overwhelming stakeholders with all the messy details
Arguing with stakeholders about why their ideas won’t work
Trying to win the ideological battle instead of focusing on the decision at hand
PART 3: DEVELOPING YOUR CONTINUOUS DISCOVERY HABITS
Chapter Fourteen: Start Small, and Iterate
Build Your Trio
Start Talking to Customers
Work Backward
Use Your Retrospectives to Reflect and Improve
Avoid These Common Anti-Patterns
Focusing on why a given strategy won’t work (AKA “That will never work here”), instead of focusing on what is within your control
Being the annoying champion for the “right way” of working
Waiting for permission instead of starting with what is within your control
Chapter Fifteen: What’s Next?
Subscribe to the Product Talk monthly newsletter
Join the Continuous Discovery Habits membership community
Join a Master Class
Join a skills deep-dive course
Hire a Product Talk coach
Intro
Foreword
Chris Mercuri
Marty Cagan
Introduction
create successful products by obsessing about customer needs, pain points, and desires