You spent weeks building the next big feature in your product. And when you roll it out, data indicates that a majority of users don’t even give this feature a try. Ouch! 

How can you prevent draining time and resources on features users don’t want? 🤔

Through a strategic and continuous product discovery process.

We chatted with Anthony Murphy, the founder of Product Pathways, to discuss the importance of product discovery. We uncover the challenges and best practices for creating your product discovery process. 

Understanding product discovery

Anthony considers product discovery a crucial, de-risking phase in product development. This process helps product teams navigate and mitigate uncertainties across four key dimensions:

• Viability
• Feasibility
• Desirability
• Usability

He underscores the importance of ensuring a product idea is economically viable, technically feasible, genuinely desired by the market, and user-friendly. 

Anthony emphasizes, "The most expensive way to find out that your idea is a bad idea is to build it and put it into the market."

Product discovery involves iterative design processes and prototype testing to align closely with user needs and market demands. This approach creates an empathetic understanding of the user, facilitating informed decision-making and allowing for iterative refinements. 

Balancing exploratory and exploitative research

A pivotal part of the conversation was around striking the perfect balance between exploratory and exploitative research. 

"Exploratory research uncovers disruptive innovations. Exploitation focuses on incremental improvements by leveraging existing assets”, explains Anthony. 

• Exploratory research: Involves broadening the search for innovative solutions, accepting higher risks and potential failure rates, with the aim of uncovering disruptive innovations and tapping into new possibilities.
• Exploitative research: Focuses on refining and enhancing existing products or concepts, leveraging lower risks, to achieve incremental improvements and optimize current assets for sustained growth.

Integrating product discovery into roadmaps

Anthony’s approach includes a dynamic product roadmap where you plan for current features while also reserving space for future opportunities identified through product discovery. 

Here’s a deeper dive into his perspective:

Strategic blend of features and opportunities

Anthony advises product teams to include both features (short-term, clearly defined product enhancements) and opportunities (long-term potential areas for innovation discovered through exploratory research) in the product roadmap. 

He prefers to create a flexible planning document. Why? It ensures that while the product team delivers tangible value to users in the short term, they’re also poised to adapt and evolve by exploring new opportunities for future growth.

Continuous cycle of innovation

Anthony highlights the significance of a "continuous cycle of delivery and discovery," where the insights gained from product discovery directly inform and shape the product roadmap. 

This cycle ensures that the product development process is not just a linear journey from idea to implementation but a spiral of iterative improvement. Each cycle of discovery brings new insights, which refine the roadmap, ensuring the product remains relevant and competitive.

Overcoming product discovery challenges

Anthony mentions, "Efficiently managing the discovery process involves breaking down problems and time-boxing activities to align with stakeholder expectations and streamline the process."

Let’s break down key challenges + solution in the product discovery process:

Securing stakeholder buy-in

🤯 Challenge: Convincing stakeholders of the value and necessity of the product discovery phase can be challenging. Stakeholders, particularly those focused on immediate results and cost-effectiveness, may view the exploratory nature of product discovery as a time-consuming and potentially costly endeavor without guaranteed outcomes.

🤩 Solution: Anthony suggests making the discovery process more tangible and less intimidating by presenting it as a series of time-boxed, focused efforts aimed at de-risking the product development process. Demonstrating how discovery activities directly contribute to avoiding costly mistakes and ensuring product-market fit can help align stakeholder expectations with the discovery process’s strategic importance.

Managing the scope and duration of discovery activities

🤯 Challenge: Product discovery can easily become unwieldy, with teams spending excessive time exploring a wide range of ideas without clear direction or focus. This can lead to discovery fatigue, where the process drags on without yielding actionable outcomes, further exacerbating stakeholder concerns.

🤩 Solution: Anthony advocates for breaking down the discovery process into smaller, more manageable segments focused on specific hypotheses or problem areas. This approach allows teams to conduct targeted explorations within set timeframes (time-boxing), ensuring that the discovery process remains focused and efficient. 

Using competitive analysis for discovery

Anthony shares a few best practices to leverage competitor data for enhancing your product discovery process:

• Strategic monitoring: Keep an informed eye on competitors, not to imitate but to understand the broader market dynamics and potential areas of innovation. Teams can observe competitor movements to identify trends, gaps, and opportunities for differentiation that they might not have considered otherwise.
• Customer-centric innovation: The key is to use these insights as a springboard for further exploration and innovation centered around the customer. It's about leveraging what competitors are doing to spark ideas for how to better serve your own customers, rather than directly copying features or strategies.
• Beyond feature comparison: While it's essential to know how your product stacks up against competitors, Anthony stresses the importance of moving beyond mere feature comparisons. The goal is to understand why competitors are making certain moves and what it might indicate about changing customer expectations or emerging market needs.
• Differentiation through customer value: Ultimately, Anthony's approach is grounded in the belief that true competitive advantage comes from deeply understanding and addressing your customers' needs in ways that competitors are not. This might involve innovation in product features, user experience, customer service, or business models.

Build products your users will love 

Anthony reminds us, "The most expensive way to find out that your idea is a bad idea is to build it and put it into the market." 

He stresses the importance of product discovery in crafting products that not only meet but exceed market demands and user expectations. 

By applying these insights, product teams can forge ahead with confidence, knowing they are equipped with the strategies and understandings necessary to navigate the complex landscape of product development.

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