Continuous discovery habits/book Flashcards
Who is the author of the continuous discovery habits book?
Teresa Torres
What book did Teresa Torres write?
She wrote the book titled continuous discovery habits, Discovery products that create customer values and business value
Who did the forward of Theresa Torres book Call continuous discovery habits?
Chris mercuri
What role does Chris mercuri Play in his company?
He is a product manager
What is the pressure that many product managers feel?
There is a huge pressure to solve customer problems and drive business value.
Chris mercuri Has searched all over the Internet looking for a guide that can tell you how to do great what?
How to do great product discovery
What does the book continuous discovery habits teach in a nutshell?
The continuous discovery habits book lays out the key elements of an end to end modern product discovery approach
What are five key elements you will learn after reading the continuous discovery habits book?
You will learn
how to set outcomes,
uncover customer problems,
prioritize,
come up with creative solutions,
test assumptions quickly,
What can we gain from practicing the habits talked about in the continuous discovery habits book and what can we expect to gain from further reading this book?
You will go from chopping and changing our discovery approach and needing lots of meetings to work out what to do next to a more structured discovery process. People knew what was expected of them and delivered more consistent results.
We shifted away from a more superficial understanding of our customers. Instead of relying on heavy, in frequent research, we developed a deeper understanding of the customers needs, problems, and desires through regular contact and lightweight research methods.
We shifted away from discovery and delivery being separate responsibilities. Now there’s more collaboration, with most of the team involved in customer interviews, mapping the customer journey, ideating on solutions, and discussing results. The whole team contributes at key points along the way, and we learn and adjust our course together.
With our leaders, we no longer wait to show them big reports and presentations. Now we have the tools to show them our thinking earlier and have better conversations about where to go to next. By applying the continuous discovery habits, we improve customer and business outcomes, but the reward for the team was even bigger, which is confidence. The habits gave us the confidence that we knew what we were doing. And after a few wins, we started to believe that we could achieve anything.
Who did the second forward in the book continuous discovery habits?
Marty Cagan
Where does Marty Cagan work?
He works for the silicon valley product group
What was Teresa Tories exposed to Stanford university?
Human centered design
Many companies fall into the trap and doing what two things?
They fall into the trap of chasing the next cell or obsessing about their competitors because many companies especially start ups didn’t have a better model for product management. They didn’t know what a good look like
What is Teresa Torres’s job title currently?
She is a product discovery coach
What does Teresa Torres teach companies to do?
She teaches product teams how to create successful products by obsessing about customer needs, pain points, and desires
She teaches teams made up of product managers, designers, and engineers how to make team decisions about what to build.
Is discovery a one time activity?
No discovery isn’t a one time activity. A digital product has never done. It can and should continue to evolve. As we learn more about our market, as our customers needs change, as new technology becomes available, good products adapt
Agile manifesto?
The authors of the agile manifesto advocated for shorter cycles with more frequent customer feedback. Second, they proposed working at a pace that could be sustained continuously, rather than furiously scurrying from 1 mile stone to another. Third, he advocated for maximum flexibility, having the ability to adapt to customer feedback quickly and easily. And forth they advocated for simplicity. They were concerned with how much of what they built was never used or offered limited value and instead advocated for teams to ruthlessly limit what they built.
Name two popular agile framework’s?
Scrum and kanban
In the early days of UX design what were too popular ways or means for collecting customer feedback?
User experience design and user research
In the early days of UX design leader struggle to give up what?
Leader struggle to give a ownership of discovery. Even with shorter cycles and more customer feedback, business stakeholder still clung to their original ideas. Most teams aren’t very good at estimating unpredictable work who is? In their shorter cycles aptly named sprints and scrum truly became biweekly sprints killing any chance of finding continuous sustainable pace. The rest of the business continued operating on an annual budget in cycle, making true flexibility nearly impossible
What were three weaknesses in early UX design?
Usability testing was often done too late in the process, making it hard to address the substantial issues that were so often uncovered. He’s a research was often outsourced to design agencies who did project-based research. And finally, teams continued to be measured by what they delivered, not whether anyone used it or if it treated any value for the customers are the business.
What is the biggest struggle the businesses have when it comes to US design?
Deciding what to build
What is the modern day cross functional team composed of?
Product managers, designers, and software engineers
Outside the product trio talked about in this book one or four other areas that could be considered important also?
Having a product marketer or product marketers, data analyst, user researchers, and customer success representatives
What are three things that many teams Chase?
Many teams Chase frameworks, tools, and methodologies, hoping that each new innovation will suddenly unlock the door to product success. However, for most frameworks, tools, and methodologies to be successful, it’s not just your tactics that need to change but also your mindset. The same will be true for the tactics in this book.
There are six mindsets it must be cultivated to successfully adopt the habits outlined in this book, name those six mindsets?
One. Outcome oriented
Two. Customer centric
Three. Collaborative
Four. Visual
Five. Experimental
Six. Continuous
Outcome oriented?
The first mindset is both a mindset and a habit. But the mindset requires that you start thinking in outcomes rather than outputs. That means rather than defining your success by the code that you ship which is your output, you define success has the real value that Coach creates for your customers and for your business which are the outcomes. Rather than measuring value inn features and bells and whistle’s, we measure success in impact, the impact we have on our customers lives and the impact we have on the sustainability and growth of our business
Customer centric?
Customer centric is the second mindset and it places the customer at the center of our world. It requires that we not lose sight of the fact, even though many companies have, at the purpose of business is to create and serve a customer. We Elevate customers needs to be on par with business needs and focus on creating customer value as well as business value
Collaborative?
The third mindset requires that you embrace the cross functional nature of digital product work and reject the siloed model, Where we hand off deliverables through stage gates. Rather than the product manager besides, the designer designs, and the engineer codes, we embrace a model or we make team decisions leveraging the expertise and knowledge that we each bring to those decisions.
Visual?
The fourth mindset encourages us to step beyond the comfort of spoken and written language and to tap into our immense power as spatial thinkers. The habits in this book will encourage you to draw, to externalize you’re thinking, and to map what you know. Cognitive psychologist has shown in study after study that human beings have an immense capacity for spatial reasoning. The habbits in this book will help you tap into that capacity.
Experimental?
The fifth mindset encourages you to Don your scientific thinking how. Many of us may not have scientific training, but, to do discovery well, we need to learn to think like a scientist identify in assumptions and gathering evidence. The habits in this book will help you develop in Hawn and experimental mindset.
Continuous?
And finally, habits will help you evolve from a project mindset to a continuous mindset. Rather than thinking about discovery as something that we do at the beginning of a project, you will learn to infuse discovery continuously throughout your development process. This will ensure that you were always able to get fast answers to your discovery questions, helping to ensure that you are building something that your customers want and will enjoy
In many product teams today what are three things that they are already doing?
Customer interviews, usability testing, and AV testing are pervasive.
What is rare in mini product teams today?
What is rare is for teams to adopt these discovery activities in a structured and sustainable way, enabling them to continuously infuse their product decisions with customer input.
What is a working definition of continuous discovery and what are four items at modern day teams use?
At a minimum, weekly touch points with customers
By the team building the product
Where they conduct small research activities
In pursuit of a desired outcome
Product teams make decisions every day. Our goal with continuous discovery is to infuse those daily decisions with as much customer input as possible. If teams are only engaging with customers on a monthly basis, they are making a months worth of decisions without customer input.
Over the course of this book, you will learn habits it will help you do what?
You will learn habits it will help you adopt a continuous cadence in a structured and sustainable way.
You will learn how to do your own research so that you can get fast answers to daily questions
You will learn how to modify traditional research activities to make them sustainable week over a week
And most importantly, you will learn to ensure that your research is in service of pursuing a desired business outcome while meeting customers needs
What did peter Drucker say about managers?
He said managers must convert societies needs into opportunities for profitable business
What did Albert Einstein say he would do if he were trying to solve a problem?
If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem in five minutes thinking about the solutions
For years Wells Fargo was known for what?
Wells Fargo was known for its cross-selling strategy
In the beginning Wells Fargo as a company started out with what?
Hey desired outcome, To increase the average number of accounts per Customer
In the beginning Wells Fargo how did desired outcome to increase the average number of accounts per customers however they did not do you what to things?
They did not hear this outcome mindset with a customer centric mindset that is critical for long-term product success
Well Wells Fargo’s fraud is exceptional, the focus on what is not uncommon?
The focus on outcomes at the cost of the customer is not uncommon
How many companies there’s tension between what two items?
There is tension between business needs and customer needs
As our product discovery methods evolve, we are shifting from what?
As our product discovery methods of all, we are shifting from an output mindset to an outcome mindset. Rather than obsessing about features which are outputs, we are shifting our focus to the impact those features have on both our customers and our business which is our outcomes. Starting with outcomes, rather than outputs, is what lays the foundation for product success
What is it that lays the foundation for product success?
Starting with outcomes, rather than output, as well as lays the foundation for product success
When a product trio was tasked with delivering an outcome, the business is clearly communicating work?
The business is clearly communicating what value the team can’t create for the business. And when the business leaves it’s up to the team to explore the best outputs that might it might drive the outcome, they are giving the team the latitude they need to create value for the customer, as we saw in the Wells Fargo story, we can’t take customer value for granted
When a product trio is tasked with an outcome, they have a choice, what is that choice?
They can choose to engage with customers, do the work require to truly understand their customers context, and focus on creating value for their customers.
Or they can take shortcuts, they can focus on creating business value at the cost of customers.
The organizational context in which the product trio works will have a big impact on which choice the product trio will make. Sometimes, however, choose to take shortcuts because they simply don’t know another way of working. The framework in this chapter in the habbits described in this book will help you resolve the tension between business needs a customer needs so that you can create value for your customers in business
When discussing our continuous discovery definition what for items need to be done as part of the process?
At a minimum, weekly touch points with customers
By the team building the product
Where they Conduct small research activities
In pursuit of a desired outcome
What is the purpose for talking to customers?
The purpose of these customer touch points is to conduct research in pursuit of a desired outcome.
We are not doing research for researchers sake, We are doing research so what?
We are doing research so that we can serve our customers in a way that creates a value for our business
Find me the best path to your desired outcome is what researchers call work?
It is white researchers call and ill structured problem.
What is the definition of an ill structured problem?
Ill structured problems are defined by having many solutions. There are no right or wrong answers, only better or worse ones. Much of the work when tackling and ill structured problem is framing the problem itself. How we frame a problem has a big impact on how we might solve it. For example in the Wells Fargo story, their leader ship, whether implicitly or explicitly, had frame the problem as grow customer accounts at all cost. This framing open the door to cheating. If, on the other hand, Wells Fargo headframe the problem as create customers who want to open more accounts, bankers would have been less likely to cheat.
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As our product discovery methods of all, we are shifting from what to what?
As a product discovery method evolve, we are shifting from an output mindset to an outcome mindset
What is the real purpose of these customer touch points when you talk to the customer on a weekly basis?
The real purpose of these customer touch points is to conduct research in pursuit of a desired outcome.
Why are we doing research for the customer?
We are doing research so that we can serve our customers in a way that create value for our business.
Finding the best path to your desired outcome is what researchers call an?
ill structured problem Also commonly called a wicked problem.
ill structured problems Are defined by?
ill Structure problems are defying by having many solutions. There are no right or wrong answers, only better or worse ones. Much of the work when tackling and ill structured problem Is framing the problem itself. How we frame a problem has a big impact on how we might solve it for example, in the Wells Fargo story, their leader ship, whether implicitly or explicitly, had Framed the problem has grow customer accounts that all cost. This framing open the door to cheating, if on the other hand, Wells Fargo had framed the problem as create customers who want to open more accounts, Bakers would have been less likely to cheat.
If product Trios tasked with delivering a desired outcome want to pursue business value by creating customer value they will need to?
They will need to work to frame the problem in a customer centric way. They will need to discover the customers needs, pain points, and desires, if addressed would drive their business outcome. For example, if Wells Fargo had learned what inspired customers to open new accounts, it might have found a customer centric way to reach their outcome.
How would you frame a problem in a customer centric way?
You would want or need to discover the customers needs, pain points, and desires that, if a dress, would drive their business outcome
In this book, I will refer to customer needs, pain points, and desires collectively as what?
Opportunities
Give a few examples in the real world Products or services that don’t fix problems?
Disneyland entertains me. Ice cream is delicious. Mountain biking is fun. These products address my desires. I could try to shoehorn these desires into needs. I need something to fill my time, I need nutrients, and I need exercise.
What term will be used to represent customer needs, pain points, and desires collectively?
Opportunities is the term that will be used to describe this
What term will be used to represent the problem space as well as the desire space?
The term that will be used is opportunity space
To reach their desired outcome, a product trio must Discover and explore what?
Product tree almost Discover and explore the opportunity space
How we frame an ill structured problem impacts?
How we frame an ill structured problem impacts how we might solve it
The implication for project trios is that two of the most important steps for reaching our desired outcome or what?
First, how are you map out and structure the opportunity space, and second, how is select which opportunities to pursue
The underlying structure to discovery that we can use to guide our work starts with what?
It starts with defining a clear outcome, one that sets the scope for discovery
After we have set up the scope for discovery what is the next step?
From there we must discover and map out the opportunity space, this is what gives structure to the ill structured problem of reaching our desired outcome. It’s the all-important problem framing that opens up the solution space. And finally we Need to discover the solution that will address those opportunities in the ass drive our desired outcome
What does OST stand for?
Opportunity solution tree
What are the four main steps make up an opportunity solution tree?
One outcome
Two opportunity
Three solution
For assumption test
Opportunity solution trees are a simple way to do work?
They are a simple way of visually represent in the past you might take to reach a desired outcome
When talking about an opportunity solution tree what does the root represent?
The root of the tree is your desired outcome, the business need that reflects how your team can create business value
Defined the opportunity space?
Opportunity space is the customers needs, pain points, and desires that, if addressed will drive your desired outcome
Below the opportunity space is what?
Below the opportunity space is the solution space. This is where we will visually depict the solutions we are exploring.
Below the solution space is what?
Below the solution space are assumption test. This is how we will evaluate which solutions will help us best create customer value in a way that drives business value.
Opportunity solution trees have a number of benefits. They will help product trios in what eight different ways?
Resolve the tension between business needs and customer needs
Build and maintain a shared understanding of how they might reach their desired outcome
Adopt a continuous mindset
An a lot better decision making
Unlock faster learning cycles
Build confidence in knowing what to do next
Unlock simpler stakeholder management
What helps resolve the tension between business needs and customer needs?
Opportunity solution trees do
When you are building an opportunity solutions tree you will only want to include what?
You will only include opportunities that are relevant to your outcome
When trading an opportunity solutions tree you should start out by what?
You should start out by prioritizing your business need, creating value for your business is what insurers that your team conserve your customer overtime. Next, the team should explore the customer needs, pain points, and desires that, if addressed, would drive the outcome. The key here is that the team is filtering the opportunity space by considering only the opportunities that have the potential to drive the business need. I mapping the opportunity space, the team is adopting a customer centric framing for how they might reach their outcome.
Buy mapping the opportunity space, the team is adopting watt?
The team is adopting a customer centric framing for how they might reach their outcome
The outcome and the opportunity space constrain what?
They constrain the types of solutions the product trio might consider. This is what helps us avoid Wells Fargo’s fate and sets Us up to create value for our customers in our business
Opportunity solution trees help do what?
The help build and maintain a shared understanding across your trio
What instinct often gets us into trouble?
Instinct it often gets into trouble for most of us, is when we encounter a problem, we simply want to solve it. We don’t always remember to question the framing of the problem. We tend to fall in love with our first solution. We forget to ask, how else might we solve this problem?
When creating opportunities solution trees what are some of the problems that sometimes can get compounded when working in teams?
When we hear a problem, we each individually jump to a fast solution. When we disagree, we engage in fruitless opinion battles. His opinion battles encourage us to fall back on our organizational roles and claim decision authority, example the product manager has the final say, instead of collaborating as a cross functional team.
In regards to an opportunity solution three 118 takes time to visualize their options what is the result?
They build a shared understanding of how they might reach their desired outcome. If they maintain this visual as they learn week over a week, they maintain that shared understanding, allowing them to collaborate overtime. We know this collaboration is critical to product success
Opportunity solution trees help product trios do what?
They help product trios adopt a continuous mindset
By solving smaller opportunities first what will happen later on?
By solving smaller opportunities first, the team will eventually sell bigger opportunities
Continuous mindset requires work?
A continuous mindset requires that we deliver value every sprint. We Creek customer value by addressing unmet needs, resolving pain points, and satisfying desires
How do we create customer value?
We create customer value by addressing unmet needs, resolving pain points, and satisfying desires.
The opportunity solution tree helps teams take large, project sized opportunities and do what with them?
The opportunity solution tree helps teams take large, project sized opportunities and break them down into a series of smaller opportunities. As you work your way vertically down the tree, opportunities get smaller And smaller. Teams can then focus on solving one opportunity at a time. With time, as the address a series of smaller opportunities, these solutions start to address the bigger opportunity. The team learns to solve project sized opportunities by solving smaller opportunities continuously
The opportunity solution tree unlocks what?
It unlocks better decision making
In Chip and Dan heaths book Titled book decisive the outline for villains of decision making that lead to poor decisions. Name the four villains?
The first feeling is looking too narrily at a problem
The second villain is looking for evidence that confirms our believes
The third villain is letting our short term emotions affect our decisions
The fourth villain is overconfidence
What is the first villain?
The first villain is looking to neroli at a problem. This is exactly why we want to explore multiple ways of framing the opportunity space.
What is the second villain?
The second villain is looking for evidence that confirms our beliefs. This is commonly known as confirmation bias.
What is the third villain?
The third villain is leading our short term emotions affect our decisions. In the product world, this often shows up when we fall in love with her ideas.
What is the fourth villain?
The fourth villain is over confidence. This, too, Is common in the product world. We are often sure our ideas will be runaway successes
What book does the offer suggest that we read next right after her book the continuous discovery habits?
The book titled decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
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