How to do product discovery
Why most product managers fail at product discovery? What are the key biases around it? Actionable framework and strategies to boost your discovery that you can start using immediately.
Hi and welcome to the Corporate Waters weekly newsletter 🙌
I’m Mikhail and I'm excited to share my learnings to help you navigate the murky waters of product management, leadership, and corporate dynamics. Subscribe to unlock the full value.
In today’s paid newsletter:
What is discovery and why most product managers fail at it;
Key product discovery biases and how to avoid them;
An actionable framework and strategies for discovery we use at Bolt that you can start implementing today (+ case studies);
How to set up and scale a rhythmic discovery process in your product teams.
Opportunity research is a core function of a product manager. On a higher level, it’s called product strategy, and on a more tactical level - discovery. Both are interconnected, as the artifacts of discovery can feed into the product strategy.
Sounds great in theory, but in practice, discovery is a mess at most organizations. Many businesses don’t see the value, product managers don’t know how to do it, and cross-functional peers often advocate for solutions.
In my early PM days, I assumed the more data I dug up, the more likely I was going to uncover gold nuggets of hidden value. In reality, I was just stuck in the never-ending divergence phase, unable to make decisions. Eventually, I gave up and settled for stakeholder-driven opinions. I wasn’t alone in this. Many of my colleagues struggled in one way or another.
No wonder many product managers are clueless. Rarely can you see examples of a structured discovery process in teams. Should you do customer interviews? Look at the numbers? In many instances, discovery is a brewing pot of stakeholder opinions, team biases, and data. On top of it, there are many misleading frameworks (e.g., double diamond, continuous discovery, F.O.C.U.S., and others). They fool most product managers with their simplicity but do not provide the tools to properly adapt discovery to the needs of your team.
Taking all this into account, I’ve decided to inject some clarity into the topic and bring to light the key biases related to discovery. I propose four actionable discovery strategies that my teams at Bolt and I use, and a framework on how you can set up a rhythmic discovery process for yourself or your teams.
It’s jam-packed with actual cases from my experience and is going to challenge all your pre-existing notions about discovery. I guarantee it will increase your impact as a PM by at least tenfold.
