From Goals to Ideas: Do Not Confuse Customer Research With Product Discovery

Hey, Paweł here. Welcome to the subscriber-only edition of The Product Compass!

Every Saturday, I share actionable tips and resources for PMs.

Here’s what you might have missed:

• Premium: How to Land a PM Interview: A Step-by-Step Guide

• Free: Your Guide to Crafting a Winning Product Strategy

• Premium: The Ultimate Validation Experiments Library (32)

• Premium: The Product Frameworks Compendium (35)

I realized I shouldn’t mix two topics in one post. So, I will publish an open Skills Assessment for PMs tomorrow. To prepare, consider studying posts related to Data Analytics and Experimentation and check our previous Competence Map + Skills Assessment.

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From Goals to Ideas: Do Not Confuse Customer Research With Product Discovery

I have no doubt that business value stems from the value we create for others. And I’m a fan of Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres.

In my previous posts on Continuous Product Discovery, I explained that most of our ideas do not work. That’s why, for an existing product, the Product Trio:

• Starts with the product goal (product outcome).

• Interviews customers to identify opportunities (customer needs/problems) that, when solved, will drive the expected outcome.

• Prioritizes important opportunities for which customers are not satisfied with the current solutions (Opportunity Score formula).

• Ideates on how to solve those problems.

• Identifies assumptions related to value, usability, viability, feasibility, and ethics (one way is by using the User Story Map).

• Tests high-risk assumptions through experimentation.

At the same time, Teresa Torres, like many other User Researchers and Designers, focuses virtually only on customer interviews. I believe that this approach is incomplete.

That’s why in the Continuous Product Discovery Masterclass, I suggested that as a part of creating an Opportunity Solution Tree, we should also:

• Leverage Product Analytics. They tell you what customers are doing across their customer journey. Interviewing customers will tell you WHY they are doing it.

• Interview Sales, Success, Customer Support, and Founders. They spend hundreds or thousands of hours with our customers every month.

• Use sources other than interviews, like surveys and market research.

Reviewing the last test assignment for premium subscribers, I realized that some assume this framework is the only valid approach.

Let me state this clearly:

While I do believe Opportunity Solution Tree is the primary way the core product teams work, it’s not the only way to come up with ideas.

What matters most is that we:

• Come up with ideas related to the product goal.

• Identify assumptions that need to be true for those ideas to work.

• Test high-risk assumptions before implementation.

So that our Product Discovery results in a validated Product Backlog.

Why you might need to act differently?

And what are the other sources of ideas?