Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value

In a PM library, Teresa's CDH book should rank #2 on the most-wanted list (Marty Cagan's Inspired is #1).Given the vastly increasing set of resources and books in the PM space, this is indeed a bold statement but IMO, this is well deserved.As a PM practitioner, I'm grateful that such an important topic (product discovery!) has met such a brilliant, structured, and systematic mind in Teresa. The book is comprehensive on the topic, starting with history, then foundational principles, and delving into all the practical aspects of practice. Teresa’s clarity of thought gives her writing perfect nuance, and the content is never over-stated nor does she make any overly broad sweeping claims.What makes her advice in the book so powerful is that the book is built on years / decades of practice. She is not just a teacher, but a coach - who in real life helps product teams across industries / companies / company stages & sizes implement these principles daily. This makes her advice very practical and pragmatic - just what you need to start making wins in your workplace tomorrow, while over time winning converts to a better way of working.This is a book for the entire product team, especially the product trio i.e., the product manager, designer, and technical lead. I have already made improvements in the way we approach product discovery, and my team loves me for it!I also enjoyed the audio-book as well, which was narrated by Teresa herself. Did not skip a second, and re-listened to many sections. Great investment!To people like Teresa (& Marty), I have only 2 things to say: Thank you, and I wonder what you will write about next?

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in realizing our own agency and how we can influence team dynamics in a product company.The book introduces many practical artifacts to help the team align and prioritize resources. One of these artifacts is the Opportunity Solution Tree (OST), which starts with business outcomes followed by opportunities based on user needs. It's important to note that there is a lot of content to learn how to go from outputs to outcomes.The book includes relevant diagrams to illustrate the framework, demonstrating one of the points Teresa makes throughout the book about the power of visualization for teamwork. Here are some of the concepts explained in the book:- Product trio (Product Manager, Designer, Software Engineer)- Experience Maps- Opportunity Solution Tree (OST)- Interview Snapshot and Story MapsTeresa recommends starting at an individual level first to avoid group thinking when creating experience maps. This is a great way to leverage diversity of thought. The best part is that Teresa not only recommends this approach at the beginning of collaboration but continuously as part of the discovery habits to keep take advantage of a diverse team. I think this is really important in order to create products that take into account many more scenarios and minorities that are usually overlooked.Another great point that I noticed in this book, is the addition of ethical assumptions in the types of assumptions to test. In the book, Teresa explains how to test these assumptions and includes examples. This subject can not be more relevant today when users are becoming more aware of privacy concerns and lack of transparency on the products we use every day.Lastly, each chapter of the book features an "anti-pattern" section where Teresa lays out problems you might run into when implementing her framework.As you can see, it's all about practice. However, Teresa makes an emphasis that is all about the right mindset.

This is a great book that is direct and straightforward in its approach. Follow the steps it describes (or tune them to your specific situation) and you will undoubtedly see an improvement in how you and your team manage products proactively. I plan on implementing some of the key aspects of this book with my team of product managers immediately.

Teresa Torres delivers a practical, no-nonsense guide to continuous discovery that every product manager should read. She breaks down the process of customer discovery into simple, repeatable habits that drive better decision-making and product outcomes. The book is packed with actionable frameworks, real-world examples, and clear explanations that make it easy to implement.What sets this book apart is its focus on making discovery a continuous practice rather than a one-time research effort. If you want to build products that truly solve user problems, this book is invaluable. Highly recommended!

I am a B2B product leader who’s worked on various enterprise products at large and mid-sized companies. In my first few years in product I didn’t spend nearly enough time talking to customers. It’s hard to be the “voice of the customer” when you don’t talk to them very often OR only when there is an issue escalation or conference. Further, I spent more time talking to customers while working at a startup despite the fact that we didn’t have many at the time. For product managers this is simply unacceptable and makes strong product work nearly impossible. This is especially true for B2B product leaders with 100’s or 1000’s of customers!I can say emphatically that as a result of reading Marty Cagan's book Inspired and now Continuous Discovery Habits that I will make weekly customer calls a cultural habit of every team I am on. This book is mandatory reading for any product manager because of the fundamental importance of product discovery. It provides practical guidance on various discovery topics that will arm you with a framework for both getting started and getting better over time. Reading and applying learnings from authors and contributors in the product community is a great way to get the coaching you need to become a highly effective product leader. If you've ever thought to yourself "Talking to customers is hard to do at my company" this book is for you. Thank you Teresa for arming me (and many others) with a framework for developing discovery habits.

As a product manager with 4+ years of experience in the role, I found myself badly wishing I had read this book day one. Because it is focused fundamentally on explaining the habits and especially why they work. It was easy to see how they can be reimagined in light of new technology. I highly recommend this book to any PM and furthermore recommend that it is read completely since there is little to no fluff.

I just finished reading, and then rereading, Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres and I truly believe it’s the most important Product Management book I have read to-date. The title in fact sells this book far short of its true value. The real gem is the introduction of the revolutionary construct of outcome-based development.As the Agile Manifesto converted me from preplanning waterfall solutions to iterating with customer feedback and as the MVP converted me from endlessly pursuing perfection to building and releasing just enough product to evaluate whether to persevere or pivot, so too will outcome-based development initiate a conversion in me. Nearly every development endeavor I am aware of has followed output-based development, need-based development, idea-based development, or problem-based development. While it’s good to have a lot of output, features somebody feels they need, cool innovations, or the solutions to peoples’ problems, it’s far more important to build things that help achieve our most desired outcomes.Teresa’s opportunity solution tree turns conventional thinking upside down by first identifying the most desired outcome, then identifying the top opportunity to pursue to reach the outcome, then ideating a large number of solutions to then select the best possible solutions to address the opportunity, all the while recognizing and testing our assumptions.I am so convinced this is the proper approach to development, I’m converting immediately.

I recently transitioned from a operation role back to product management, this is a good refresher to remind me what good practice to follow

Przesyłka dotarła bardzo szybko, ale niestety to w jakim stanie jest książka nie powinno mieć miejsca.

Very well written, with full clarity. Seems like she knows her readers well ;) Teresa practices what she preaches. True respect for her work and I’m sure I will learn more from her and her community going forward.

I'm a huge fan of Teresa Torres. I follow her blog posts and watched her lectures. But something was missing. A masterpiece to bring all her knowledge together in one place. A book.Here's what I've learned from this book:- Focus on the outcome, never on output.- Don't go blindly chasing solutions. Invest in the opportunity space. It pays off.- Understand the differences between problems and desires. If all human beings were completely rational, a bunch of businesses would never exist.- Don't go with WHETHER OR NOT decisions. There's always more to consider, always more to compare. Frame your problems correctly, that's the first step.- Mistakes are usually reversible. Experiment fast. Test your assumptions.- Some people don't even know what they want. Don't expect your customers to tell you what to do next. You need to uncover the hidden opportunities.- In interviews, help your customer to tell the actual behavior, not his idealistic version. Frame your questions appropriately.- Be careful when writing opportunities on the Opportunity Solution Tree. Always ask yourself: "is it you that wishes a customer would say that or did he really say it?". In doubt, interview again and again.- This may sound obvious, but it can easily pass unnoticed. Be aware of all restrictions. No matter how much an opportunity is important to the customer if you won't get buy-in within your company. Time is precious. Don't waste it going after the wrong bet.- And obviously, make doing discovery a habit.

really good book if you are interested in learning how to apply continuous discovery.

The target audience of this book is the Product Trio ( Product Managers, Product Designers and Software leads)The book presents a solid framework to start, iterate and develop continuos product discovery habits. This is a invaluable guidance for product trios who are willing to integrate product discovery to their day to day life. The narrative is not only at theoretical level but also lists down actionable techniques and approaches to integrate it into practice.Teresa advocates since years the "Opportunity Solution Tree" as a visual aid to structure product discovery process. This tree starts with the outcome -not output-. Opportunities (customer needs, pain points and desires), potential solutions to those opportunities and underlying assumptions for those solutions are other essential elements of the tree.All in all, this is a must-read book for the product folks who appreciate the benefit of product discovery and don't know how to start or what to do when. I highly recommend this book !My significant takeaways from the book:- Discovery is a continuos process, it is hand in hand with delivery and evolves constantly over time.- She thinks developing a weekly habit of customers interviews is a keystone habit for continues discovery.- In order to make continuos interviewing sustainable, we need to automate the recruiting process.- The right way of asking question at interviews is to go after a recent story of the customers. Instead of asking "Tell me about the last time you watched Netflix, you should ask " Tell me about your story when you watched Netflix last week."- Test assumptions but not ideas, it takes much less time,- We are often overconfident about the success of our ideas because of two cognitive biases, be prepared to be wrong!1) Confirmation bias: We are more likely to seek out confirming evidence than we seek out disconfirming evidence2) Escalation of commitment: The more we invest in an idea, the more committed we become to that idea.- The fruit of discovery work is often the time we save when we decide not to build something.