Ask Teresa: My Sales Team Won’t Let Me Talk To Customers. What Now?

The product trio leads discovery. But this doesn’t mean that other teams aren’t involved. Being thoughtful about product discovery means staying on good terms with others throughout your company. You might need to get buy-in or support from leadership, you may need to collaborate with user research or data science teams, and you will likely experience...

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Tools of the Trade: A Look at Pendo’s Discovery Tech Stack

The beauty of continuous discovery is that there’s no single right way to do it. This is why Teresa often talks about guiding principles and core concepts, but encourages everyone to find what works best for them. For example, while Teresa recommends creating a product trio that includes a product manager, engineering lead, and a designer, she acknowledges...

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How Continuous Discovery Works (and Doesn’t) in Early-Stage Startups

“I get that the continuous discovery habits framework works well for mature products, but does it work for early-stage startups?” This question always surprises me. I spent all of my full-time employee experience at early-stage startups (many of them pre-product) and I relied on these same habits to figure out what to build. But the more I talk with...

Apr 2022

Ask Teresa: What Are the Best Customer Interview Questions?

We recently launched the Ask Teresa series on Product Talk, where I tackle common questions and challenges that I hear from people as they begin to adopt continuous discovery. Find all the posts in this series here. If you’re serious about continuous discovery, one of the most important steps you can take is committing to weekly (at a minimum) touch...

Apr 2022

Discovering Solutions: Quickly Determine Which Ideas Will Work (And Which Won’t)

Visualizing discovery work with an opportunity solution tree has been a game-changer for both me and the teams that I work with. It’s a simple visual that packs a lot of power. At the top, we start with a clear outcome. This sets the scope for our discovery. From there, an effective team is doing two key research activities week over week. They are...

Mar 2022

Ask Teresa: How Do You Select Customers for Customer Interviews?

Welcome to the next installment of Ask Teresa, the column where I address common questions about continuous discovery. If you’d like to see the other posts in this series, you can find them here. Creating frequent touch points with customers is one of the core tenets of continuous discovery. I’ve often said that I believe interviewing customers frequently...

Mar 2022

Ask Teresa: Who’s Responsible for What in the Product Trio?

As a product discovery coach, I get asked a lot of questions. This makes complete sense—as people read my book, take one of my courses, go through my training, or watch one of my talks, they naturally wonder about applying the concepts of continuous discovery to their own work. They consider the ideas in the context of their own team and company. And...

Feb 2022

Product in Practice: Assumption Testing with Engineers at Orion Labs

Engineers are often reluctant to participate in discovery. This is only natural: Through years of bad habits, many of us have shown engineers that we only value them for the code they can write. This is a common mistake that Teresa addressed in a Core Concepts post, saying “We’ve spent the past 30+ years asking engineers to be order takers. We’ve often...

Feb 2022

Scaling Impact: A Look at the Year Ahead (2022)

Happy New Year! I’m excited for 2022. Every December, I take several weeks to reflect on the ending year and to look forward to the year ahead. For the past few years, I’ve shared my reflection and plans in the first post of the year. This year is no different. 2020 and 2021 brought many changes to my business. Some were driven by the tumultuous...

Jan 2022

Looking for a Product Job? Here’s How to Assess a Company’s Continuous Discovery Habits

No company is perfect, especially when it comes to continuous discovery. But some companies are decidedly better than others. No company is perfect, especially when it comes to continuous discovery. But some companies are decidedly better than others. – Tweet This You can probably easily list off where your current company is nailing it and where...

Dec 2021