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Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value
"If you haven't had the good fortune to be coached by a strong leader or product coach, this book can help fill that gap and set you on the path to success."
- Marty Cagan
How do you know that you are making a product or service that your customers want? How do you ensure that you are improving it over time? How do you guarantee that your team is creating value for your customers in a way that creates value for your business?
In this book, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right.
If you want to discover products that customers love-that also deliver business results-this book is for you.
- Marty Cagan
How do you know that you are making a product or service that your customers want? How do you ensure that you are improving it over time? How do you guarantee that your team is creating value for your customers in a way that creates value for your business?
In this book, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right.
If you want to discover products that customers love-that also deliver business results-this book is for you.
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
2288 people are currently reading
10053 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 362 reviews
October 31, 2021
There are many books about discovery techniques as "Sprint", "Testing Business Ideas", "The Lean Product Playbook", "The Mom Test", etc. But there is any which covers the discovery approach as a whole from an organizational, strategic perspective. "Continuous Discovery Habits" fills this gap. Teresa Torres teaches how to THINK about discovery and ACT on a daily basis.
The book is very practical. The author introduces into discovery framework and gives a lot of advice which is based on scientific research, real cases, and tons of experience. Every piece of advice is easy to understand and implement. I liked the language - the author avoids abstract words and complicated sentences. The goal is clear - to teach how to do discovery in the simplest way it's possible.
The book also motivates a lot. In the last chapter Teresa Torres writes that she had the same challenges as every product manager and tells a secret how she overcame those obstacles. After the read, you really believe you can start doing discovery no matter what! I really feel that Teresa is a good person and she really wants to help product managers build better products and therefore change the world to a better place.
To be honest, I expected more content (there are 200+ pages with large print) but Teresa is very specific and writes in a Marty Cagan style a bit ;) She's not screwing around on a reader! Many times I felt that one page taught me more than fifty pages of another book.
"Continuous Discovery Habits" is a must-read for Product Managers. I think it's the best product book I've ever read.
The book is very practical. The author introduces into discovery framework and gives a lot of advice which is based on scientific research, real cases, and tons of experience. Every piece of advice is easy to understand and implement. I liked the language - the author avoids abstract words and complicated sentences. The goal is clear - to teach how to do discovery in the simplest way it's possible.
The book also motivates a lot. In the last chapter Teresa Torres writes that she had the same challenges as every product manager and tells a secret how she overcame those obstacles. After the read, you really believe you can start doing discovery no matter what! I really feel that Teresa is a good person and she really wants to help product managers build better products and therefore change the world to a better place.
To be honest, I expected more content (there are 200+ pages with large print) but Teresa is very specific and writes in a Marty Cagan style a bit ;) She's not screwing around on a reader! Many times I felt that one page taught me more than fifty pages of another book.
"Continuous Discovery Habits" is a must-read for Product Managers. I think it's the best product book I've ever read.
July 20, 2021
This is an excellent book I definitely recommend to read for anyone building products.
The book focuses on the question "what to build", which can be daunting looking at the universe of possible options. Teresa Torres provides practical and concrete methodologies to clarify a problem and structure the opportunity space. Several concepts will be familiar to those already following her blog. However there is tremendously value she provides by strongly articulating the goal of each method and at which stage of the discovery cycle to use them.
All important aspects of the product discovery process are mentioned, including measuring success and impact on the business outcome. The examples provided are concrete and help with assimilating the content.
I am happy to add this book to my 'product must-read list'.
The book focuses on the question "what to build", which can be daunting looking at the universe of possible options. Teresa Torres provides practical and concrete methodologies to clarify a problem and structure the opportunity space. Several concepts will be familiar to those already following her blog. However there is tremendously value she provides by strongly articulating the goal of each method and at which stage of the discovery cycle to use them.
All important aspects of the product discovery process are mentioned, including measuring success and impact on the business outcome. The examples provided are concrete and help with assimilating the content.
I am happy to add this book to my 'product must-read list'.
January 4, 2023
A very practical guide that really focuses on building discovery habits in the true meaning of the word. Although I have been practising most of the principles mentioned here, it has always been sort of scattered and unstructured, at least when compared to this guide. There were so many places when I thought yes, this totally makes sense, this will make my work much more efficient.
Overall, one of the most useful books I have read.
Overall, one of the most useful books I have read.
April 16, 2022
Fabulous Fabulous Fabulous
I was on the fence on whether this book would be good when I picked this book. I've read a bunch of books on Agile, Lean, UX, Product and Execution. I wasn't sure there would be much in this book that would be new. Was I surprised!
The book is not just a 50,000 words to say do continuous user research. It tells you the details on how to from planning to execution to incorporating it in the process. I highly recommend this book to founders, PMs, designers and researchers. A must read.
I was on the fence on whether this book would be good when I picked this book. I've read a bunch of books on Agile, Lean, UX, Product and Execution. I wasn't sure there would be much in this book that would be new. Was I surprised!
The book is not just a 50,000 words to say do continuous user research. It tells you the details on how to from planning to execution to incorporating it in the process. I highly recommend this book to founders, PMs, designers and researchers. A must read.
June 13, 2023
Wonderfully optimistic and an inspiration for new PMs, but for seasoned practitioners, there's a lot in here that has either aged quickly or is not reflective of real life on the front lines of leading a product team. The advocation of Product 'Trios' that doesn't include a data analyst or data scientist is one such example. Teresa seems to have ignored this discline completely. Given the book was written in 2020, long after data scientists became a norm, I was surprised at this omission. I believe a lot of it comes down to the recency bias from spending time in consultancy and training with companies who haven't developed strong R&D practices yet, rather than recalibrating and updating understanding with organisations who have and are doing it well.
The author frequently quotes Cagan, another practitioner who hasn't been close to the front lines for a long time, and is also something of an idealist. His writings also accidentally causes dismay and disillusionment in those who realise that PM utopia isn't possible anywhere where resources aren't boundless, once they are in the thick of it.
The author frequently quotes Cagan, another practitioner who hasn't been close to the front lines for a long time, and is also something of an idealist. His writings also accidentally causes dismay and disillusionment in those who realise that PM utopia isn't possible anywhere where resources aren't boundless, once they are in the thick of it.
May 30, 2021
This is one of the best product books I’ve read! Next to Inspired & Empowered it should be a must read for every product manager. It brings you into action with hands on tips and provides a framework from strategy to execution of product discovery. Thank you, Teresa!
July 23, 2021
Perhaps the Best Book about Product Management I’ve Ever Read
I love Teresa’s approach because it’s practical, action-oriented, and effective. She boils the uncertainty-laden process of product discovery down to actionable routines that really do make a difference, and aren’t simply busy-work habits for the sake of looking productive. Her framework for discovery leans in on the natural curiosity that good product people have, gives them strategies for turning that curiosity into visual models of opportunities, and then methods for effectively evaluating those opportunities against each other. I’ve integrated her strategies into my own work after 10+ years in product management, and my work is certainty the better for it. Highly recommended.
I love Teresa’s approach because it’s practical, action-oriented, and effective. She boils the uncertainty-laden process of product discovery down to actionable routines that really do make a difference, and aren’t simply busy-work habits for the sake of looking productive. Her framework for discovery leans in on the natural curiosity that good product people have, gives them strategies for turning that curiosity into visual models of opportunities, and then methods for effectively evaluating those opportunities against each other. I’ve integrated her strategies into my own work after 10+ years in product management, and my work is certainty the better for it. Highly recommended.
May 26, 2021
It is an exceptional book, if you need to look at your entire product decision process and find a rationale that is user-centered, mitigates risks, and at the same time brings business results, this book will help you for sure.
March 25, 2025
I recently read "Continuous Discovery Habits" by Teresa Torres, and it felt like going through a well-structured workshop presentation with extensive speaker notes. The book is packed with valuable insights on how to create products that deliver both customer and business value. However, I found it to be quite repetitive at times, with numerous case studies that seemed to drive the outline of each chapter. While the stories were engaging, they often overshadowed the main points. Despite this, the book offers a solid framework for continuous discovery, emphasizing the importance of weekly customer touchpoints and collaborative team efforts. If you're looking for a comprehensive guide to product discovery, this book is worth a read, but be prepared for some repetition along the way.
My reading notes (below):
Part 1: What Is Continuous Discovery? (Chapter 1)
Focus:Teaching product teams to create successful products by obsessing about customer needs, pain points, and desires.
Outcome: Teams equipped with continuous discovery habits to discover, iterate, and refine products that deliver value for customers and businesses.
Emphasis on Discovery: Many companies focus on delivery but under-invest in discovery.
Continuous Discovery: Not a one-time activity; involves co-creating with customers from the beginning.
Roles: Product managers, designers, and software engineers are collectively responsible for creating value.
Mindsets: Outcome-oriented, customer-centric, collaborative, visual, experimental, and continuous.
Definition: Weekly touchpoints with customers by the product team, conducting small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome (p. 21).
A Common Framework for Continuous Discovery (Chapter 2)
Pursue Business Needs: Addressing customers’ needs (p. 25).
Research Purpose: Serve customers in a way that creates value for the business (p. 27).
Opportunities: Customer needs, pain points, and desires collectively as “opportunities” (p. 27).
Opportunity Space: Represents the problem space and desire space (p. 28).
Opportunity Solution Trees: Visual representation of paths to desired outcomes (p. 30).
Benefits: Resolve tension between business needs and customer needs (p. 30).
Problem-Solving: Ask, “How else might we solve this problem?” (p. 32).
Continuous Mindset: Deliver value every sprint by addressing unmet needs, resolving pain points, and satisfying desires (p. 33).
Decision-Making Villains: Looking too narrowly, confirmation bias, short-term emotions, overconfidence (p. 34).
Compare and Contrast: Develop this mindset (p. 35).
Analysis Paralysis: Reversible decisions (p. 36).
Guidance: Shape of opportunity solution trees guides discovery work (p. 38).
Interviews: Shallow opportunity space guides more customer interviews (p. 38).
Outputs: Leaders may struggle to let go of dictating outputs (p. 39).
Stakeholder Justification: Justify evidence-based decisions to stakeholders (p. 39).
Part 2: The Continuous Discovery Habits (Chapters 3-13)
Focusing on Outcomes Over Outputs (Chapter 3)
Autonomy: Teams have the autonomy to find the best solutions.
Roadmaps: Fixed roadmaps communicate false certainty.
Metrics: Business outcomes, product outcomes, and traction metrics.
Goal Setting: S.M.A.R.T. goals vs. "do your best" approach.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid pursuing too many outcomes, ping-ponging between outcomes, and focusing on outputs as outcomes (p. 57).
Visualizing What You Know (Chapter 4)
Experience Maps: Visual, not verbal; start individually to avoid groupthink.
Co-Creation: Develop a shared experience map from individual perspectives.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid endless debates, using words instead of visuals, and not refining maps (p. 70).
Continuous Interviewing (Chapter 5)
Purpose: Discover and explore opportunities.
Challenges: Direct questions often lead to inaccurate answers.
Storytelling: Use specific stories to gather reliable data.
Synthesis: Continuously synthesize learnings with interview snapshots.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid relying on one person for interviews, asking direct questions, and stopping synthesis (p. 96).
Mapping the Opportunity Space (Chapter 6)
Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize paths to desired outcomes.
Prioritization: Address customer opportunities that drive desired outcomes.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid framing opportunities from the company’s perspective and capturing feelings as opportunities (p. 114).
Prioritizing Opportunities, Not Solutions (Chapter 7)
Assessment: Evaluate top-level opportunities and prioritize based on customer needs, market factors, and company context.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid delaying decisions for more data and over-relying on one set of factors (p. 128).
Supercharged Ideation (Chapter 8)
Brainstorming: Generate ideas individually before sharing with the team.
Inspiration: Look to analogous products and extreme users.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid limiting ideation to one session and selecting ideas that don’t address the target opportunity (p. 142).
Identifying Hidden Assumptions (Chapter 9)
Types of Assumptions: Desirability, viability, feasibility, usability, and ethical.
Story Mapping: Get specific about how an idea will work.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid generating too few assumptions and not being specific enough (p. 164).
Testing Assumptions, Not Ideas (Chapter 10)
Goal: Collect data to move assumptions from uncertain to certain.
Evaluation: Define specific criteria for success.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid overly complex simulations and testing with the wrong audience (p. 180).
Measuring Impact (Chapter 11)
Start Small: Experiment with instrumentation.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid trying to measure everything and forgetting to test connections between product and business outcomes (p. 194).
Managing the Cycles (Chapter 12)
Iterative Approach: Tackle small opportunities iteratively.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid overcommitting to opportunities and drawing conclusions from shallow learnings (p. 208).
Show Your Work (Chapter 13)
Transparency: Share your work with stakeholders throughout the process.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid overwhelming stakeholders with details and arguing about ideas (p. 217).
Part 3: Developing Your Continuous Discovery Habits (Chapter 14)
Start Small and Iterate
Collaboration: Adopt habits as a cross-functional trio.
Reflection: Regularly reflect on your discovery process.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid focusing on why strategies won’t work and waiting for permission to start (p. 230).
My reading notes (below):
Part 1: What Is Continuous Discovery? (Chapter 1)
Focus:Teaching product teams to create successful products by obsessing about customer needs, pain points, and desires.
Outcome: Teams equipped with continuous discovery habits to discover, iterate, and refine products that deliver value for customers and businesses.
Emphasis on Discovery: Many companies focus on delivery but under-invest in discovery.
Continuous Discovery: Not a one-time activity; involves co-creating with customers from the beginning.
Roles: Product managers, designers, and software engineers are collectively responsible for creating value.
Mindsets: Outcome-oriented, customer-centric, collaborative, visual, experimental, and continuous.
Definition: Weekly touchpoints with customers by the product team, conducting small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome (p. 21).
A Common Framework for Continuous Discovery (Chapter 2)
Pursue Business Needs: Addressing customers’ needs (p. 25).
Research Purpose: Serve customers in a way that creates value for the business (p. 27).
Opportunities: Customer needs, pain points, and desires collectively as “opportunities” (p. 27).
Opportunity Space: Represents the problem space and desire space (p. 28).
Opportunity Solution Trees: Visual representation of paths to desired outcomes (p. 30).
Benefits: Resolve tension between business needs and customer needs (p. 30).
Problem-Solving: Ask, “How else might we solve this problem?” (p. 32).
Continuous Mindset: Deliver value every sprint by addressing unmet needs, resolving pain points, and satisfying desires (p. 33).
Decision-Making Villains: Looking too narrowly, confirmation bias, short-term emotions, overconfidence (p. 34).
Compare and Contrast: Develop this mindset (p. 35).
Analysis Paralysis: Reversible decisions (p. 36).
Guidance: Shape of opportunity solution trees guides discovery work (p. 38).
Interviews: Shallow opportunity space guides more customer interviews (p. 38).
Outputs: Leaders may struggle to let go of dictating outputs (p. 39).
Stakeholder Justification: Justify evidence-based decisions to stakeholders (p. 39).
Part 2: The Continuous Discovery Habits (Chapters 3-13)
Focusing on Outcomes Over Outputs (Chapter 3)
Autonomy: Teams have the autonomy to find the best solutions.
Roadmaps: Fixed roadmaps communicate false certainty.
Metrics: Business outcomes, product outcomes, and traction metrics.
Goal Setting: S.M.A.R.T. goals vs. "do your best" approach.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid pursuing too many outcomes, ping-ponging between outcomes, and focusing on outputs as outcomes (p. 57).
Visualizing What You Know (Chapter 4)
Experience Maps: Visual, not verbal; start individually to avoid groupthink.
Co-Creation: Develop a shared experience map from individual perspectives.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid endless debates, using words instead of visuals, and not refining maps (p. 70).
Continuous Interviewing (Chapter 5)
Purpose: Discover and explore opportunities.
Challenges: Direct questions often lead to inaccurate answers.
Storytelling: Use specific stories to gather reliable data.
Synthesis: Continuously synthesize learnings with interview snapshots.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid relying on one person for interviews, asking direct questions, and stopping synthesis (p. 96).
Mapping the Opportunity Space (Chapter 6)
Opportunity Solution Trees: Visualize paths to desired outcomes.
Prioritization: Address customer opportunities that drive desired outcomes.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid framing opportunities from the company’s perspective and capturing feelings as opportunities (p. 114).
Prioritizing Opportunities, Not Solutions (Chapter 7)
Assessment: Evaluate top-level opportunities and prioritize based on customer needs, market factors, and company context.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid delaying decisions for more data and over-relying on one set of factors (p. 128).
Supercharged Ideation (Chapter 8)
Brainstorming: Generate ideas individually before sharing with the team.
Inspiration: Look to analogous products and extreme users.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid limiting ideation to one session and selecting ideas that don’t address the target opportunity (p. 142).
Identifying Hidden Assumptions (Chapter 9)
Types of Assumptions: Desirability, viability, feasibility, usability, and ethical.
Story Mapping: Get specific about how an idea will work.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid generating too few assumptions and not being specific enough (p. 164).
Testing Assumptions, Not Ideas (Chapter 10)
Goal: Collect data to move assumptions from uncertain to certain.
Evaluation: Define specific criteria for success.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid overly complex simulations and testing with the wrong audience (p. 180).
Measuring Impact (Chapter 11)
Start Small: Experiment with instrumentation.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid trying to measure everything and forgetting to test connections between product and business outcomes (p. 194).
Managing the Cycles (Chapter 12)
Iterative Approach: Tackle small opportunities iteratively.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid overcommitting to opportunities and drawing conclusions from shallow learnings (p. 208).
Show Your Work (Chapter 13)
Transparency: Share your work with stakeholders throughout the process.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid overwhelming stakeholders with details and arguing about ideas (p. 217).
Part 3: Developing Your Continuous Discovery Habits (Chapter 14)
Start Small and Iterate
Collaboration: Adopt habits as a cross-functional trio.
Reflection: Regularly reflect on your discovery process.
Anti-Patterns: Avoid focusing on why strategies won’t work and waiting for permission to start (p. 230).
March 13, 2022
This book is a great companion for anyone working on digital products and helps guide the discovery journey.
It has practical examples and gives you all the information you need to start tomorrow.
Do you think “But that will never work here!”? Think again! It also gives you some tips on how to start small and find ways of building continuous discovery habits in any kind of situation. Yes, even in situations where you have a list of features to deliver.
It’s about making your own discovery luck if you will :)
It has practical examples and gives you all the information you need to start tomorrow.
Do you think “But that will never work here!”? Think again! It also gives you some tips on how to start small and find ways of building continuous discovery habits in any kind of situation. Yes, even in situations where you have a list of features to deliver.
It’s about making your own discovery luck if you will :)
July 27, 2022
Teresa shows how we can learn early and often, explaining how we can start with the outcomes that our customers businesses want to achieve, and offering valuable tools to test assumptions against these outcomes.
The book teaches you how to start with a clear outcome, interview to discover opportunities, and assumption test to quickly evaluate solutions, being both evidence-based (with a lot of theory and eight years helping hundreds of product teams) and actionable. While reading, you will also get detailed exercises you can put into practice tomorrow.
The book teaches you how to start with a clear outcome, interview to discover opportunities, and assumption test to quickly evaluate solutions, being both evidence-based (with a lot of theory and eight years helping hundreds of product teams) and actionable. While reading, you will also get detailed exercises you can put into practice tomorrow.
September 8, 2021
Excellent book covering product discovery the way other authors cover product delivery. Often times in product management books, discovery is sort of hand waves away. This provides a playbook (or habits) to use.
Lots of material pulled from other books that will be on a product manager's bookshelf, but pulled together in a coherent way.
Lots of material pulled from other books that will be on a product manager's bookshelf, but pulled together in a coherent way.
March 30, 2022
Maybe because I am new to the product management world, coming from a CX background ... but I was not inspired by the book and feel that some technical terminologies were misused (like experience map) ... nevertheless I learned good things and I will re-read it again after spending more time with product management (to fair) in my rating ... no one knows I might change it to 5/5,
April 10, 2023
Great book about product discovery. Tiny bit too much about the concepts and with examples that are too high level.
A few takeaways:
* prioritise opportunities, not solution ideas
* test assumptions, not ideas
* brainstorm ideas individually, evaluate them in groups
* don't fight ideological battles
* many teams aren't allowed to do product discovery, however, all teams can start small
A few takeaways:
* prioritise opportunities, not solution ideas
* test assumptions, not ideas
* brainstorm ideas individually, evaluate them in groups
* don't fight ideological battles
* many teams aren't allowed to do product discovery, however, all teams can start small
June 22, 2021
It's one of the best Product Management books I've read recently. It distills the best Innovation frameworks into actionable steps for any Product team, regardless of maturity. Pick it up when you're looking for a new read!
April 8, 2024
The method itself is fine. Reading the book is like watching paint dry. Cut the fluff and this could be fit into 30-40 pages and it wouldn't miss anything important. The "anti-patterns" stuff was great.
June 11, 2021
A great book on discovery habits. I was able to immediately apply a lot of things at work. Thanks Teresa for this engaging and actionable book!
December 13, 2023
first ~75 pages probably not necessary but became one of the best books on product/interviewing/discovery I've read.
September 26, 2021
My favorite Product Discovery book so far! Easy to read and connect to. A lot of examples to keep you thinking about how to apply the tools Teresa shares. I would recommend to any one looking to be closer to their customers and find the “real” opportunities
January 8, 2022
Amazing read! Really great coverage on product discovery techniques and easily applicable to ones own work in product. Our team already used a lot of the artifacts from this book! Great!
December 24, 2024
As a Product Manager, I’ve always felt that the challenge of keeping products aligned with real user needs is an ongoing struggle. Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres is a great primer in reshaping my approach to product discovery. The book isn't just a collection of theories; it offers practical tools and habits for embedding continuous discovery into the day-to-day workflow of any product team, providing for a practical manual on how to build habits that keep your product in sync with user feedback. The fact that it is highly recommended in the PM community and within my organization, speaks for itself.
One of the standout concepts in the book is the Product Trio —a collaborative approach where Product managers, UX designers, and Engineers work together throughout the discovery process. This trio helps ensure that discovery isn’t siloed but is a shared responsibility across the team, allowing for better alignment, faster decision-making, and a more holistic understanding of the problems you're solving. Torres emphasizes that the Product Trio is key to driving outcomes, rather than focusing on mere outputs.
Another core theme is shifting from feature-driven development to a focus on Desired outcomes. Instead of simply shipping features, Torres stresses that teams should measure success by the outcomes those features achieve—whether it’s reducing friction for users, increasing engagement, or solving a critical problem. By focusing on outcomes, teams are more likely to deliver real value to users.
These insights, alongside a variety of practical frameworks like the Opportunity Solution Tree, have significantly improved how I approach product discovery at my organization, and I believe they can do the same for others looking to make more data-driven, user-centered decisions.
The writing is approachable and packed with real-world examples. It feels like you’re sitting down with a mentor who’s been through the trenches and is offering you a clear roadmap to avoid common pitfalls. For anyone who feels overwhelmed by the need to constantly gather, analyze, and act on user feedback, this book is a must-read.
Key Takeaways
Discovery as a Continuous Process
One of the most powerful concepts in the book is that discovery shouldn’t be a one-off event during the product development cycle, but rather an ongoing habit. Torres emphasizes integrating discovery practices into your daily and weekly routines—embedding user research, feedback loops, and testing throughout the entire lifecycle of the product.
Outcomes Over Outputs
A core theme in the book is shifting from focusing on outputs (the features or products we ship) to focusing on outcomes (the impact those features have on user problems and needs). Torres makes a compelling case for prioritizing outcomes because they align directly with the user value we want to deliver, rather than just tracking what was built or shipped. This mindset has been incredibly helpful for my team in moving away from the traditional “feature factory” model, which can often lead to delivering things users don't truly need.
Focus on ‘Jobs to Be Done’
Instead of just asking users what they want, Torres stresses the importance of understanding the “job” they’re hiring your product to do. By framing your discovery work around customer jobs, you shift from building features to solving real user problems.
The Opportunity Solution Tree
One of the most innovative frameworks in the book is the Opportunity Solution Tree. This is a visual tool that helps teams break down opportunities into smaller, more manageable parts, while also tracking potential solutions. Torres walks through how you can map out the problem, opportunities within that problem, and potential solutions, creating a clear roadmap to test and prioritize. The Opportunity Solution Tree has become a cornerstone in how we evaluate ideas at my organization, helping us avoid jumping straight to solutions without fully understanding the opportunities.
Small, Iterative Experiments
Instead of waiting until you have all the answers, Torres encourages product teams to break down problems into smaller, testable hypotheses. Small, iterative experiments (whether qualitative or quantitative) help validate ideas and assumptions quickly, minimizing risk while maximizing learning.
Making Time for Discovery
Many teams struggle to find time for discovery work amid their busy sprints. Torres offers practical strategies for prioritizing discovery, including scheduling specific blocks of time for research and actively protecting these from being swallowed by feature development or urgent issues.
Real-Life Use at My Org
At my organization, we’ve taken many of the principles from the book and applied them to our workflow. One of the key shifts has been integrating user interviews into our regular sprint cycle. Previously, we’d conduct interviews sporadically, but now, we prioritize at least one user conversation each week. This regular cadence has helped us stay grounded in what users truly need versus what we assume they want.
The shift towards focusing on outcomes instead of outputs has been another game-changer. I now ask myself, “What problem does this solve?” rather than “What feature can we launch?” This shift in thinking has made our feature development much more aligned with user value. Instead of simply checking off a list of features to ship, we now focus on the impact we want to achieve for our users.
I also plan running more small experiments rather than large product releases. For instance, validating new feature ideas with prototype testing before committing to full-scale development.
The Opportunity Solution Tree has also become a valuable tool for us. We use it to map out our product opportunities in a visual format, connecting them to the potential solutions we want to explore. This process ensures that we're not getting lost in a sea of potential ideas but rather staying focused on the highest-value opportunities.
My favourtie Quotes from the book (each chapter starts with one)
Discovery is not a phase you go through. It is a way of working that you practice continuously.
The biggest risk is not the decision you make, but the decisions you don’t make because you’re waiting for certainty.
Small experiments and iterative testing lead to smarter decisions, faster.
If you’re not actively talking to your users, you’re making assumptions about what they need. And assumptions are dangerous.
The goal of continuous discovery isn’t to find a single right answer. It’s to find the right questions to ask.
Instead of focusing on features, focus on the outcomes you want to achieve. Outputs are what you ship, but outcomes are the value you create.
Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Useful Resources:
1. https://www.producttalk.org (You can also subscribe to the weekly newsletter)
2. https://producttalkdaily.substack.com/ (I find substack to be incredibly useful)
Recommended Books
Throughout the book, Torres references several books that complement the themes of discovery, user research, and product development. Here are some of the recommended reads:
Lean Product and Lean Analytics by Ben Yoskovitz & Alistair Croll
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Inspired by Marty Cagan
Decisive by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
One of the standout concepts in the book is the Product Trio —a collaborative approach where Product managers, UX designers, and Engineers work together throughout the discovery process. This trio helps ensure that discovery isn’t siloed but is a shared responsibility across the team, allowing for better alignment, faster decision-making, and a more holistic understanding of the problems you're solving. Torres emphasizes that the Product Trio is key to driving outcomes, rather than focusing on mere outputs.
Another core theme is shifting from feature-driven development to a focus on Desired outcomes. Instead of simply shipping features, Torres stresses that teams should measure success by the outcomes those features achieve—whether it’s reducing friction for users, increasing engagement, or solving a critical problem. By focusing on outcomes, teams are more likely to deliver real value to users.
These insights, alongside a variety of practical frameworks like the Opportunity Solution Tree, have significantly improved how I approach product discovery at my organization, and I believe they can do the same for others looking to make more data-driven, user-centered decisions.
The writing is approachable and packed with real-world examples. It feels like you’re sitting down with a mentor who’s been through the trenches and is offering you a clear roadmap to avoid common pitfalls. For anyone who feels overwhelmed by the need to constantly gather, analyze, and act on user feedback, this book is a must-read.
Key Takeaways
Discovery as a Continuous Process
One of the most powerful concepts in the book is that discovery shouldn’t be a one-off event during the product development cycle, but rather an ongoing habit. Torres emphasizes integrating discovery practices into your daily and weekly routines—embedding user research, feedback loops, and testing throughout the entire lifecycle of the product.
Outcomes Over Outputs
A core theme in the book is shifting from focusing on outputs (the features or products we ship) to focusing on outcomes (the impact those features have on user problems and needs). Torres makes a compelling case for prioritizing outcomes because they align directly with the user value we want to deliver, rather than just tracking what was built or shipped. This mindset has been incredibly helpful for my team in moving away from the traditional “feature factory” model, which can often lead to delivering things users don't truly need.
Focus on ‘Jobs to Be Done’
Instead of just asking users what they want, Torres stresses the importance of understanding the “job” they’re hiring your product to do. By framing your discovery work around customer jobs, you shift from building features to solving real user problems.
The Opportunity Solution Tree
One of the most innovative frameworks in the book is the Opportunity Solution Tree. This is a visual tool that helps teams break down opportunities into smaller, more manageable parts, while also tracking potential solutions. Torres walks through how you can map out the problem, opportunities within that problem, and potential solutions, creating a clear roadmap to test and prioritize. The Opportunity Solution Tree has become a cornerstone in how we evaluate ideas at my organization, helping us avoid jumping straight to solutions without fully understanding the opportunities.
Small, Iterative Experiments
Instead of waiting until you have all the answers, Torres encourages product teams to break down problems into smaller, testable hypotheses. Small, iterative experiments (whether qualitative or quantitative) help validate ideas and assumptions quickly, minimizing risk while maximizing learning.
Making Time for Discovery
Many teams struggle to find time for discovery work amid their busy sprints. Torres offers practical strategies for prioritizing discovery, including scheduling specific blocks of time for research and actively protecting these from being swallowed by feature development or urgent issues.
Real-Life Use at My Org
At my organization, we’ve taken many of the principles from the book and applied them to our workflow. One of the key shifts has been integrating user interviews into our regular sprint cycle. Previously, we’d conduct interviews sporadically, but now, we prioritize at least one user conversation each week. This regular cadence has helped us stay grounded in what users truly need versus what we assume they want.
The shift towards focusing on outcomes instead of outputs has been another game-changer. I now ask myself, “What problem does this solve?” rather than “What feature can we launch?” This shift in thinking has made our feature development much more aligned with user value. Instead of simply checking off a list of features to ship, we now focus on the impact we want to achieve for our users.
I also plan running more small experiments rather than large product releases. For instance, validating new feature ideas with prototype testing before committing to full-scale development.
The Opportunity Solution Tree has also become a valuable tool for us. We use it to map out our product opportunities in a visual format, connecting them to the potential solutions we want to explore. This process ensures that we're not getting lost in a sea of potential ideas but rather staying focused on the highest-value opportunities.
My favourtie Quotes from the book (each chapter starts with one)
Discovery is not a phase you go through. It is a way of working that you practice continuously.
The biggest risk is not the decision you make, but the decisions you don’t make because you’re waiting for certainty.
Small experiments and iterative testing lead to smarter decisions, faster.
If you’re not actively talking to your users, you’re making assumptions about what they need. And assumptions are dangerous.
The goal of continuous discovery isn’t to find a single right answer. It’s to find the right questions to ask.
Instead of focusing on features, focus on the outcomes you want to achieve. Outputs are what you ship, but outcomes are the value you create.
Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Useful Resources:
1. https://www.producttalk.org (You can also subscribe to the weekly newsletter)
2. https://producttalkdaily.substack.com/ (I find substack to be incredibly useful)
Recommended Books
Throughout the book, Torres references several books that complement the themes of discovery, user research, and product development. Here are some of the recommended reads:
Lean Product and Lean Analytics by Ben Yoskovitz & Alistair Croll
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Inspired by Marty Cagan
Decisive by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
January 19, 2022
What doesn't change, isn't solid - while whole discovery process, its methods and tips in this book by Teresa Torres aren't the only "one right way" of doing things, it is an idea of a continuous habit that creates a "solid core" of the book, because the habit has a power to fix many things by its repeatability. It's like Groundhog Day or Live Die Repeat movies. :-)
The book contains very practical step-by-step guide of how you can do product discovery, how to cooperate with a team, how to manage stakeholders and how to mitigate a risk.
I would recommend this book to all product managers, designers and techs that work in an agile hamster wheel of delivery because this continuous discovery process fits nicely in their routines. I would also recommend it to researchers as their field, from my experience, doesn't fit into agile cycles so well and the book contains practical guide of how they could fit better.
The book contains very practical step-by-step guide of how you can do product discovery, how to cooperate with a team, how to manage stakeholders and how to mitigate a risk.
I would recommend this book to all product managers, designers and techs that work in an agile hamster wheel of delivery because this continuous discovery process fits nicely in their routines. I would also recommend it to researchers as their field, from my experience, doesn't fit into agile cycles so well and the book contains practical guide of how they could fit better.
March 8, 2024
Heavily leans towards a 2.5 star rating for me. A lot of good foundational principles for beginning product managers. One of my biggest annoyances was that she basically took a lot of standard product development and design principles and renamed them/put her own spin on things. Much of the activities and models mentioned are things product designers have been doing for years. It's kind of like when Apple announces something "new" that Google has been doing for years but they butter it up like they just invented it.
I didn't care much for her writing style either. How many times can you preface what is about to be talked about in the following chapters with "...as we'll discuss in the next chapters"? Overall, I didn't find this book helpful. The author was trying to fix things that aren't broken or trying to look like she invented certain commonly used practices.
I didn't care much for her writing style either. How many times can you preface what is about to be talked about in the following chapters with "...as we'll discuss in the next chapters"? Overall, I didn't find this book helpful. The author was trying to fix things that aren't broken or trying to look like she invented certain commonly used practices.
February 12, 2022
I'm not sure why this book has so good reviews -maybe it's due to the course, which may be much better?
But the book itself is a strange mix of cognitive psychology, a lot of interviewing advice, etc.
But the main problem is that overall approach - "Opportunity Solution Tree" - seems completely unpractical.
She mentioned that "people admits that they don't use OST in their practice after training" :)
The problem with this approach that going through the tree and picking a leaf node you can't guarantee end to end picture/scenario. You can't just choose one and ignore everything else. Well, if you are enhancing existing product -maybe you can, but she does not refer to such a specific scenario.
But the book itself is a strange mix of cognitive psychology, a lot of interviewing advice, etc.
But the main problem is that overall approach - "Opportunity Solution Tree" - seems completely unpractical.
She mentioned that "people admits that they don't use OST in their practice after training" :)
The problem with this approach that going through the tree and picking a leaf node you can't guarantee end to end picture/scenario. You can't just choose one and ignore everything else. Well, if you are enhancing existing product -maybe you can, but she does not refer to such a specific scenario.
August 24, 2022
As someone who is new to the PM world and works in a company still developing the product practice, I have found this book INVALUABLE.
It’s incredibly practical and forces you to think critically about everything you do in product.
I’ve already started implementing the practices and see myself regularly coming back to re-read the book!
It’s incredibly practical and forces you to think critically about everything you do in product.
I’ve already started implementing the practices and see myself regularly coming back to re-read the book!
August 1, 2023
I think this book had a lot of good information, but it felt very unclear the whole time. A lot of “do this, but not too much.” I also found it hard to apply to my work, but I hope I can someday!! I technically gave this 2.75 stars 3
June 25, 2024
Applied "growth mindset" to personal ways of working and ways of working across teams and organizations. Thinking clearly about what needs building by frequently and consistently listening to stakeholders/customers. Rapidly prioritizing needs and opportunities (which are often where others are experiencing pain points) using visualization tools and imagining partner/user experiences. Exploring possible solutions quickly by pressure testing assumptions, which is often faster than pressure testing full ideas. Exploring and prototyping quickly before committing further resources, never letting perfect be the enemy of the good.
This book is full of helpful mindset/attitude-level adjustments. I'm not a product manager, designer, or software engineer. Nevertheless, even in my somewhat esoteric role as a quantitative researcher working at the intersection of scientific discovery (epidemiology) and operational delivery (public health systems), I still have a diverse set of stakeholders and clients that I need to serve and a lot of the mindsets/concepts/processes in this book translate pretty well as I seek to provide higher-value outcomes on faster timescales which will ultimately, I hope, save more lives.
This book is full of helpful mindset/attitude-level adjustments. I'm not a product manager, designer, or software engineer. Nevertheless, even in my somewhat esoteric role as a quantitative researcher working at the intersection of scientific discovery (epidemiology) and operational delivery (public health systems), I still have a diverse set of stakeholders and clients that I need to serve and a lot of the mindsets/concepts/processes in this book translate pretty well as I seek to provide higher-value outcomes on faster timescales which will ultimately, I hope, save more lives.
November 26, 2021
Miért nem került a kezembe ez a könyv pályám egy korábbi szakaszában, amikor - a mostanihoz hasonlóan - kifejezetten fontos lett volna a kétszázvalahány oldalba sűrített tömény okosság? Nos, a válasz egyszerű: ez egy új könyv, 2021-ben (azaz idén) adták ki, esélyem se lett volna korábban hozzájutni. Szépen bele is simul azoknak az újgenerációs terméktervezéssel és -menedzsmenttel foglalkozó műveknek a sorába, amelyben olyan remek kiadványok találhatók, mint az Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love és az Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success.
Menet közben is jegyzeteltem, de valószínűleg újra elolvasom, és egyből alkalmazom is a technikáit egy jelenlegi projektben. Alapmű.
Menet közben is jegyzeteltem, de valószínűleg újra elolvasom, és egyből alkalmazom is a technikáit egy jelenlegi projektben. Alapmű.
February 22, 2023
Waste of time and money.
1.) Too Much Fluff -- The book spends too much time citing meaningless quotes and research from other papers, then glosses over important steps. We don't need three pages defining brainstorming and telling us the history of the term. I know Steve Jobs led iPhone development and don't want to waste three pages of my life reading how much of a genius he is, only to be told that the author doesn't know about their product development process because "Apple is secretive about the way they work." Like, no duh! Your job as an author is to tell me something I don't know, not regurgitate what has already received media coverage and books ad nauseum. Likewise, she constantly references Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast, and Slow, just repeating quotes without turning them into actionable product development tactics. I expected less theory, more practice.
2.) Irrelevant examples -- all mostly well-known from big companies: Slack, Facebook, Amazon, the iPhone. This is common knowledge across the industry. I don't care about how a customer decides what to watch on TV and then breaking down in excruciating detail every basic mind decision in purchasing a pair of jeans. Tell us about a product we don't know! In the jeans shopping example, she keeps reiterating that the customer isn't lying, but who cares? I don't care whether or not the customer is deceiving me, I care about how to develop a more innovative product. Just listening to the customer give a form response doesn't do that. Nor does trying to psychoanalyze the customer as if she is misreading reality -- obviously, price and brand and convenience matter, and the weights don't mirror some algebraic formula. This kind of conclusion is best internalized, by putting yourself into the customer's shoes. Psychoanalysis of a one-line customer quote has little to do with coming up with product ideas. Then, she glosses over terms that people don't know -- what is an OST? -- without so much as including a glossary of terms.
3.) No index. The book contains so many irrelevant examples in industries like TV programming, jeans, and big banking, that I quickly found myself wanting to skip to parts relevant to my industry. Unfortunately, the book contains no index or glossary! There's no way to search and skip to the interesting parts because there's no alphabetical list of topics next to the page numbers mentioning them. The intro held so much promise because she was saying that so many products don't just "solve a problem," citing Disneyland and games, but then I couldn't find another example later in the book. What a letdown!
4.) Lack of insight - Talking to customers is valuable. Who knew? The book is overly reliant on customer feedback loop -- and the fact that there is even a loop in place. Most of the text assumes that your customers are people you can just readily approach and query to get your next feature or product idea. This doesn't mirror real-world development. Most new products, like ones that might go on Kickstarter, Indie Hackers, Y Combinator, or Product Hunt, don't have hordes of customers waiting to give their feedback and participate in user testing. There's no insight or new techniques searching or coming up with original ideas, then finding customers or markets to serve. The entire text assumes you talk to customers (this endless source of ideas and opinions), get their feedback, then simplify that into features. Most of the techniques described in the book -- decision trees, pre-mortems, question refinement, story flowcharts -- don't really generate insight. They just complicate/lengthen/augment the customer feedback loop by organizing it in ways to extract common trends. But I'm not going to discover the next Dropbox, Sleep+, or Gravity Blanket by boxing and arrowing what my (existing) customers tell me. You need to come up with the idea first! This book treats that step as an afterthought.
5.) Misnomer -- The book promises product discovery, but then says nothing about discovering new problems to solve or areas to develop. Instead, it regurgitates well-known existing products from industries that have already largely been explored/solved.
6.) Target audience -- The book cover purports to help small businesses and startups trying to develop desired products, but then assumes in the text that you work as part of a large organization where you can schedule 10-12 interviews per week and hold meetings with large teams to brainstorm. She talks regularly about the product trio -- a product manager, a designer, and an engineer -- but often, these are the same person, or people wear multiple hats. She talks about pitching to executives and CEOs/C-suite leaders, as if this bureaucracy exists in every product team. It feels like a book written to a PM or product manager in a large Fortune 500 company in the USA, rather than a technique applicable to a small, scrappy 1-10 person team.
Overall, the book restates and complicates common sense with what the author deems are original tactics, when it's just user testing and layered feedback. Wells Fargo and the Davies Symphony Hall aren't exactly examples that inspire me to develop better or more innovative products. We don't need a litany of quotes from Daniel Kahneman or the backstory behind brainstorming and agile scrum -- this is all just wind. Provide actionable advice that a software creator can apply from early product development -- zero customers -- to final deployment. That kind of specific, actionable advice is but a fraction of this book, less than 10% of the verbiage.
1.) Too Much Fluff -- The book spends too much time citing meaningless quotes and research from other papers, then glosses over important steps. We don't need three pages defining brainstorming and telling us the history of the term. I know Steve Jobs led iPhone development and don't want to waste three pages of my life reading how much of a genius he is, only to be told that the author doesn't know about their product development process because "Apple is secretive about the way they work." Like, no duh! Your job as an author is to tell me something I don't know, not regurgitate what has already received media coverage and books ad nauseum. Likewise, she constantly references Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast, and Slow, just repeating quotes without turning them into actionable product development tactics. I expected less theory, more practice.
2.) Irrelevant examples -- all mostly well-known from big companies: Slack, Facebook, Amazon, the iPhone. This is common knowledge across the industry. I don't care about how a customer decides what to watch on TV and then breaking down in excruciating detail every basic mind decision in purchasing a pair of jeans. Tell us about a product we don't know! In the jeans shopping example, she keeps reiterating that the customer isn't lying, but who cares? I don't care whether or not the customer is deceiving me, I care about how to develop a more innovative product. Just listening to the customer give a form response doesn't do that. Nor does trying to psychoanalyze the customer as if she is misreading reality -- obviously, price and brand and convenience matter, and the weights don't mirror some algebraic formula. This kind of conclusion is best internalized, by putting yourself into the customer's shoes. Psychoanalysis of a one-line customer quote has little to do with coming up with product ideas. Then, she glosses over terms that people don't know -- what is an OST? -- without so much as including a glossary of terms.
3.) No index. The book contains so many irrelevant examples in industries like TV programming, jeans, and big banking, that I quickly found myself wanting to skip to parts relevant to my industry. Unfortunately, the book contains no index or glossary! There's no way to search and skip to the interesting parts because there's no alphabetical list of topics next to the page numbers mentioning them. The intro held so much promise because she was saying that so many products don't just "solve a problem," citing Disneyland and games, but then I couldn't find another example later in the book. What a letdown!
4.) Lack of insight - Talking to customers is valuable. Who knew? The book is overly reliant on customer feedback loop -- and the fact that there is even a loop in place. Most of the text assumes that your customers are people you can just readily approach and query to get your next feature or product idea. This doesn't mirror real-world development. Most new products, like ones that might go on Kickstarter, Indie Hackers, Y Combinator, or Product Hunt, don't have hordes of customers waiting to give their feedback and participate in user testing. There's no insight or new techniques searching or coming up with original ideas, then finding customers or markets to serve. The entire text assumes you talk to customers (this endless source of ideas and opinions), get their feedback, then simplify that into features. Most of the techniques described in the book -- decision trees, pre-mortems, question refinement, story flowcharts -- don't really generate insight. They just complicate/lengthen/augment the customer feedback loop by organizing it in ways to extract common trends. But I'm not going to discover the next Dropbox, Sleep+, or Gravity Blanket by boxing and arrowing what my (existing) customers tell me. You need to come up with the idea first! This book treats that step as an afterthought.
5.) Misnomer -- The book promises product discovery, but then says nothing about discovering new problems to solve or areas to develop. Instead, it regurgitates well-known existing products from industries that have already largely been explored/solved.
6.) Target audience -- The book cover purports to help small businesses and startups trying to develop desired products, but then assumes in the text that you work as part of a large organization where you can schedule 10-12 interviews per week and hold meetings with large teams to brainstorm. She talks regularly about the product trio -- a product manager, a designer, and an engineer -- but often, these are the same person, or people wear multiple hats. She talks about pitching to executives and CEOs/C-suite leaders, as if this bureaucracy exists in every product team. It feels like a book written to a PM or product manager in a large Fortune 500 company in the USA, rather than a technique applicable to a small, scrappy 1-10 person team.
Overall, the book restates and complicates common sense with what the author deems are original tactics, when it's just user testing and layered feedback. Wells Fargo and the Davies Symphony Hall aren't exactly examples that inspire me to develop better or more innovative products. We don't need a litany of quotes from Daniel Kahneman or the backstory behind brainstorming and agile scrum -- this is all just wind. Provide actionable advice that a software creator can apply from early product development -- zero customers -- to final deployment. That kind of specific, actionable advice is but a fraction of this book, less than 10% of the verbiage.
August 26, 2023
This book is an absolute Bible on the topic of product discovery.
Most of it is spent on detailing Teresa's framework, which is incredibly well presented and justified. Each chapter is a step of the framework and is very well tied to the previous and the next ones, offering also a Common Anti-Patterns section at the end of each chapter.
The last portion of the book is spent on what I think this type of books never get to: pragmatically showing you won't be able to do it all in one go and arguing for small iterative steps implementing this framework in your company.
Very powerful book from a very intelligent author, it definitely made me grow on this topic!
Most of it is spent on detailing Teresa's framework, which is incredibly well presented and justified. Each chapter is a step of the framework and is very well tied to the previous and the next ones, offering also a Common Anti-Patterns section at the end of each chapter.
The last portion of the book is spent on what I think this type of books never get to: pragmatically showing you won't be able to do it all in one go and arguing for small iterative steps implementing this framework in your company.
Very powerful book from a very intelligent author, it definitely made me grow on this topic!
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