Product coach, author of Continuous Discovery Habits
Teresa Torres is a product coach and the author of Continuous Discovery Habits. She defines continuous discovery as building continuous feedback loops with customers, and she wants product teams to interview every week, starting with as little as one interview a week. Her opportunity solution tree gives the work a shape: an outcome at the root, branching into opportunities and then into solutions.
Lenny's Podcast 01:11 07:20 23:35 24:28 27:17
Research
Everything in the backlog is a bet. Weekly interviews and an opportunity tree are how the bets get better.
It's a tree visual, so it's just like a decision tree. It starts with an outcome at the root of the tree, and then it branches into the opportunity space, and then it branches into solutions and maybe even assumption tests from there.
Research
One outcome at the root, unmet needs below it, solutions and assumption tests below those. Prune the rest.
That was the purpose of the opportunity solution tree: how do I add some structure to this wide open messy problem?
Teresa Torres
optimizes for a repeating weekly rhythm with whoever the product can recruit, on the theory that the habit compounds.
argues the opposite trade: pick a fixed set of reference customers, six to eight for B2B, and design with the same people until they will vouch for the product.
Teresa Torres
grows the tree downward from an outcome and refuses to let a solution into the opportunity space. Several solutions branch under one opportunity so the team can compare them, and every branch has to trace back to something a customer said in a story.
shapes work the other way. A senior person defines the problem and a rough solution together at the right level of abstraction, leadership bets on that shape for a fixed six-week cycle, and the filter on ideas is whether they keep coming back rather than whether an interview surfaced them.
Focus interviews and prototype tests on what people actually did, not on what they would do or think they would do.
Avoiding garbage-in-garbage-out research
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Frame opportunities at a level specific enough to be solvable (e.g., 'hard to enter password letters with Apple TV remote') rather than vague wishes.
Populating the opportunity space of the tree
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
In a well-functioning product trio, keep searching for an option everyone can support rather than escalating disagreements to a single decider.
Collaborative decision-making inside the PM-design-engineering trio
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Never stop making delivery bets until discovery is finished; keep shipping while starting discovery in parallel so bets improve over time.
When leaders claim there is no time for discovery
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Automate weekly interview recruiting so an interview appears on the calendar with zero effort from the product team (product opt-in or internal-team triggers plus scheduling links).
Building a sustainable continuous-discovery habit
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Break every idea into its underlying assumptions, prioritize them, and run many small assumption tests per week rather than large experiments on whole ideas.
Making continuous discovery sustainable at scale
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Collect specific stories of past behavior rather than asking direct or hypothetical questions; drive the interview by repeatedly asking what happened next along the timeline.
Customer interviewing to surface opportunities
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres 22:00
Compare and contrast multiple solutions for the same opportunity instead of over-committing to the first obvious idea.
When the opportunity is core or differentiating
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Discovery and delivery are continuous parallel activities, not sequential phases.
Phased thinking kills appetite for discovery; simultaneous practice steadily improves bet quality.
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Everything in the backlog is a bet; discovery simply helps the team make better bets over time.
Treating items as bets removes the false requirement that every item must be fully validated before delivery and encourages parallel discovery.
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
Individual contributors should first change their own habits (talk to customers, map outcomes) rather than fight for top-down organizational change.
Personal habit change is within control and still improves daily decisions even under a fixed roadmap.
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres 18:47
One customer conversation is better than zero; product teams are unfairly held to a higher evidence standard than the rest of the business.
Small-n qualitative data plus fast feedback loops is legitimate for behavior-change work.
Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres
