I have yet to see an organization where what needs to be done is less than the time needed to get it done. The biggest problem I have seen over and over again is too many projects to work on and not enough time to get them done. Coming to think of it, this is not just an organizational problem, this is a human problem. We all have too many things we want to do than we have time to do them.
Product discovery is learning fast and hence discovering fast. The question to ask is not just “are we delivering the right solution?”, the real question is “are we solving the right problem?” Discovery addresses the second question.
Many teams rush to build a solution without taking enough time to discover what to build. They focus too much on the “how” without having a shared understanding of the “what”.
Steve Jobs once said, “You’ve gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you gonna try to sell it.”
Here are 3 discovery practices that I believe every product manager and product owner needs to be aware of and practice often.
3-Amigos
The 3-amigos is a practice I learned from George Dinwiddie. The main idea is to bring together the 3 different perspectives needed to build shared understanding and explore different angles of the product.
Usually a product manager or product owner working alongside a developer and a tester to come up with scenarios and questions that usually none of them could answer on their own. [Watch ‘Give me an example’ to see a 3-Amigos session in action!]
Personas
Without understanding who we are building this product for, how do we know if they really need it. The idea of personas is to understand who needs our product and what problems are they solving with it. What job are they hiring your product for? [Watch Clayton Christensen explains how we hire products to do jobs for us!]
Story Mapping
Imagine the Product Owner and the team sitting together to talk about abstract ideas of what needs to be built. Perhaps the team talks about a bunch of stories that they will be working on for the upcoming iteration. So, what’s the problem here? I am glad you asked!
One of the biggest problems I found is walking away with a different understanding for everyone involved. To me the most important aspect of discovery is building shared understanding among the team.
Jeff Patton in his book, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product calls Story Mapping a pattern not an invention. He continues to say, “It’s what sensible people do to make sense of a whole product or whole feature.” [Watch Jeff Patton walk through story mapping in less than 5 minutes!]
There are many more discovery practices to explore like 7 product dimensions, acceptance scenario, example mapping and impact mapping that I also recommend you look into. Pick a couple and try them out and you will notice that better conversations will emerge!
