Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres

Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and coach. She teaches a structured and sustainable system for continuous discovery that helps product teams infuse their daily product decisions with customer input. She’s coached hundreds of teams at companies of all sizes, from early-stage startups to global enterprises, in a variety of industries. She has taught over 11,000 product people discovery skills through the Product Talk Academy and hundreds through her coaching practice, and is the author of Continuous Discovery Habits.
Find the full transcript here: www.lennyspodcast.com/teresa-...
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Where to find Teresa:
• Product Talk: www.producttalk.org/
• Opportunity solution tree: www.producttalk.org/opportuni...
• Continuous Discovery Habits: www.amazon.com/Continuous-Dis...
• LinkedIn: / teresatorres
• Twitter: / ttorres
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Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: / lennysan
• LinkedIn: / lennyrachitsky
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Thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Persona: withpersona.com/lenny
• Dovetail: dovetailapp.com/lenny
• Stytch: stytch.com/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Teresa's background
(04:56) How Teresa is in the top 5 people in the world who’s helped the most PMs.
(06:19) What is the “opportunity solution tree framework”?
(09:35) What’s an example of an opportunity solution tree, for Netflix?
(14:04) Why do we usually approach opportunity finding wrong?
(18:01) What should you do if your company is a feature factory?
(21:58) What is continuous discovery, and why is it so important?
(23:57) What do you do if your leaders tell you there’s no time for user research?
(26:49) How can you automate weekly conversations with customers?
(30:07) How do you stay unbiased as a PM about a potential solution?
(32:13) Should a PM have more say over other functions?
(36:20) What are Teresa’s best tips for how to interview customers?
(40:28) What’s the most common mistake people make while interviewing customers?
(41:04) How does discovery change as your company grows?
(43:58) When should you do user research and when should you run an experiment?
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Production and marketing by penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail].

[@sergioreyes1970]

Teresa is my Product Discovery guru. I discovered her about 4-5 years ago, and her methods have really helped me & my teams with Product Discovery. Back then, she didn't have a book, so I read all of her blog posts. I shouldn't say this, but I think her individual blog posts are collectively better than the book. Same information, but I feel many of the concepts are better explained and some of the comments people leave are interesting.

[@abdurrahmanhalis]

Although every single one is precious, this was one of the richest episodes of the podcast Lenny. Let me dump what I have noted from Teresa'a wisdom maybe it might help others as well. WHAT IS Continuous Discovery ? Discovery : Decide what to build Delivery : Build & ship we need to do both simultaneously 1. Customers should be involved in Discovery 2. Digital Products are NOT PROJECTS to package and put on shelf, they are always evolving. Result: = Recurring customer interviews forever ---------------------- HOW TO RECRUIT PEOPLE: B2C : Just like putting NPS surveys, ask your users whether they want to participate 20 min talk within the Product (using feedback tool like Intercom) > Calendly Like scheduler > Recurring Interview meeting on PM calendar. B2B : Ask sales / support teams to find relevant users to schedule. ---------------------- HOW TO CONDUCT INTERVIEWS: NO: Do not ask out of context questions : What would you like to watch? How do you find it? Would you do this / that.. YES: Ask them to tell stories of experience and be a curious listener that wants to learn more: Tell me last time you watched a movie. When, where, with whom, steps of the experience.. Pain points are hidden here. You DO NOT have to conduct Discovery for every feature. Every solution (backlog item) is a BET How much risk is involved in this BET, how much risk do you want to mitigate? > Based on this decide how much invest into discovery ---------------------- HOW TO BE unbiased about your opinions / solution: Come up with MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS & experiment. ---------------------- THIS WAS MINDBLOWING ! We naturally collaborate and do thing together when we're child, but TOXIC BUSINESS CULTURE taught us to be on certain political roles / power hierarchies / territories to guard etc. Marshmallow Experiment: a group is given some tools and a marshmallow and asked to build the tallest structure to put the MM on. Kindergarten kids always performed better than adults. Kids just start doing, trial and error , naturally collaborate MBA students negotiate the strategy, decision making, political roles etc. We need to learn back that kindergarten level collaboration.

[@williamdoust]

I subscribed. As a community tutor in England, I have always been person centred and have used the human-to-human opportunities (coffee breaks), one-to-one and peer included support, to listen to stories in order to uncover mindsets, lived experiences and sticky points that impact learning. It shapes the framing of the instruction and identifies universal patterns. It is an ongoing qualitative process that feeds into the formal

[@maddogcop]

Just watched the beginning of this podcast and i absolutely love it: you need tto watch this while reading her book! Great job Lenny bringing this to the PM community !

[@ajaydeepak5815]

thanks a ton lenny for hosting teresa learnt a ton from single episode.

[@asmaimtiazgardezi3519]

Love this interview. So much to work on now.

[@josevalle7133]

Love the interview! So many nuggets of wisdom.

[@El_Diablo_12]

30:18 really do good discovery work on the core product experience or differentiators

[@user-iq3ti1yh6c]

Great informative video material. Great podcast! Thank you!

[@ah8734]

One of the best books

[@Nitinme007]

I wish someone could also do the tldr here - I have watched it but now forgetting some of the aspects :)

[@polina_m]

Love it love it love it!

[@giorgitukhashvili1383]

Where were the blitz questions at the end? 😂 Really great interview and it is always exciting to find proof that the way you are working is not incorrect. Really helps in spreading these ideas when you can refer to some expert

[@maddogcop]

Lenny, i can't find this episode in Google Podcast, any chance you could upload it? I like to listent to Google Podcast when i am running or in the car so this wouod help. Cheers

[@maddogcop]

My bad i just found it... Cheers

[@tnabizade]

It is so hard to preceive this approach: you always discover and you always deliver. Ok so then how to map it to confidence level? If you continuously on the level of lover confidence level because of these two processes going not in phases but kind of symultaneous, how you gonna cross the line and launch something? Critical thinking....