“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” Albert Einstein
When creating digital products, a product manager works across two types of activities: product discovery - which involves deeply understanding what value we are creating for users, and product delivery - creating that value in a robust way and making it available to users.
Discovery is the exploration part, delivery the execution part.
In other words, a good product manager needs to build the right thing (discovery) and build things right (delivery).
“In discovery, we are tackling the various risks before we write even one line of production software.
The purpose of product discovery is to quickly separate the good ideas from the bad.” Marty Cagan
Interestingly enough, this is also how our brain works - constantly switching between a diffuse mode, associated with creativity, seeing the big picture and making new connections, and focused mode - involving a methodical and analytical approach to solving problems.
Both discovery and delivery are equally valuable,
but it’s the harmony between them which matters.
What we are observing however is a great imbalance in how much time teams spend on delivery vs how little time they spend on discovery.
Fundamentally, we want to avoid the Build trap described by Melissa Perri as the moment when “organizations become stuck measuring their success by outputs rather than outcomes. It's when they focus more on shipping and developing features rather than on actual value those things produce. When companies stop producing real value for the users, they begin to lose market share, allowing them to be disrupted.”
To do so, we - at Panash, are determined to give our clients and partners the keys to better product decisions through discovery.
“Continuous Discovery means at a minimum weekly touchpoints by the team building the product where they conduct small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome” Teresa Torres
Practically, we support businesses in: finding their own recipe for continuous discovery -one that fits their organization’s culture, digging a complex problem and understanding users jobs-to-be-done, upskilling the team to boost their discovery competencies, etc...
By combining user research, design thinking and product management, a product discovery lead excels at spotting where the value lies for users and therefore how to make better product decisions based on evidence and facts rather than gut feelings and opinions.
We’re pulling together an inclusive and diverse team of remarkable individuals who are curious by nature and thrilled by entrepreneurship. Join us in helping companies adopt the right practices in helping humans progress.
