I’ve been meaning to write this article for many years, but since it’s mainly historical in nature there have always been more pressing topics. But every so often someone will reach out because they’re trying to track down the origin...
Apple is probably the most secretive company I know. Especially given that they’re the most valuable company in the world, it’s remarkable how little has been written about how they actually discover and develop the technology-powered products that fuel their...
Readers of this blog know the importance we place on vetting and refining product ideas through experimentation with real customers. This is called product discovery and every company has its unique circumstances and challenges with how to do it. We’ve...
Article: Product Discovery: Pitfalls and Anti-Patterns By SVPG Partner Chris Jones SVPG works with lots of product teams from lots of different companies. Many of these teams believe they are already doing Product Discovery. A few are doing it quite...
Much of product discovery work doesn’t actually require a lot of planning. We need to come up with a solution to a particular problem, and often this is straight forward, and we can proceed quickly to delivery work. But for certain...
Much has been written about how to do product discovery in startups, by me and many other people. There are many challenges for startups, most importantly, survival. But one of the real advantages from a product point of view...
In my last article I talked about one technique for applying Scrum concepts to product discovery – the opportunity backlog. In this article, I wanted to talk about another, which is to time-box product discovery. First, for those that are...
In my last article I discussed the keys to product optimization including A/B testing. However, I emphasized that this type of A/B testing is not the same as the A/B testing we do during product discovery. In this article I’d...
Article: Product Discovery for Non-Technology Products I’m often asked whether or not the concepts that I advocate and write about are applicable to non-software products as well as the consumer and business internet services that I almost exclusively focus on. ...
When product managers and designers move from the very linear, Waterfall-based processes, to the much more iterative and exploratory discovery-based process that I and others advocate, they sometimes take a little while to appreciate and adapt to the fast pace...
In my last article, I discussed the situation where Product Discovery is essentially not discovery at all, but rather just a mad dash of just-in-time spec writing so that the engineers can be kept busy. I discussed how important it...
As readers of these articles know, I am a big fan of high-fidelity prototyping and user testing on current or prospective customers. These techniques form the basis of Product Discovery; it’s the key to discovering the minimum viable product –...
In earlier articles I’ve written about the product discovery process – discovering a product that is valuable, usable and feasible. I’ve explained that this is the primary responsibility of the product manager, and that product discovery requires a collaboration between...
Have you seen this situation before? Your company gets all excited about a product idea, and as product manager you are asked to define it. You are told that the engineers will be finished with their current project in 4...
One question that has come up since the beginning of tech-powered product creation, is whether creating products is fundamentally art or science? In my mind there was never really a question that it has always been a blend of both. ...
