discovery-process

Discovery Process guides product managers through a complete product-discovery cycle, from an initial problem hypothesis to a validated solution, by orchestrating problem framing, customer interviews, synthesis, and experimentation into one structured path. Grounded in the continuous-discovery practices of Teresa Torres and Marty Cagan, it is designed to de-risk product decisions, keep them customer-centric, and build confidence progressively through small experiments rather than committing to expensive builds on untested assumptions. It explicitly frames discovery as an ongoing practice that runs in parallel with delivery, typically one to two cycles per quarter, and distinguishes it from waterfall research, solution user-testing, and a substitute for shipping.

The workflow spans six phases over roughly two to four weeks: frame the problem, conduct research, synthesize insights, generate solutions, validate solutions, and decide and document (build, pivot, or kill). It can begin even without a hypothesis, since the first phase helps construct one. Phase 1 draws on component and interactive sub-skills including a problem-framing canvas, a formal problem statement, and, when needed, proto-personas and jobs-to-be-done, producing a problem hypothesis, three to five research questions, and success criteria, with a decision point on whether there is enough context to start research. Phase 2 prepares discovery interviews, recruits five to ten customers per cycle (aligned with Teresa Torres's guidance of roughly one interview per week), and schedules 45-to-60-minute sessions, yielding an interview guide of open-ended, Mom Test-style questions and a synthesis plan.

Guidance on when to use it covers exploring new product areas, investigating retention or churn, and validating strategic initiatives before roadmap commitment; it advises against use for well-understood problems, situations where stakeholders have already committed to a solution, or tactical bug fixes and technical debt. When run as a guided conversation, it defers to a workshop-facilitation protocol for one-question turns, progress labels, interruption handling, and numbered recommendations at decision points, while this workflow file remains the source of truth for the phase sequence and domain-specific outputs. A template file provides the full fill-in structure, and an estimated 30 to 60 minutes covers the guided facilitation itself.