Product Discovery Exploration!
How do we prepare ourselves for the Product Discovery phase? How can practice product discovery attribute to establish our own product?
Whenever we think about a product, it always comes with a solution! Every product is solving a customer problem in a unique way by some expert who has a competitive advantage of that solution.
This diagram shows us these two sides of the world ( Problem and Solution)
Product discovery traverse through both these side of the world. We need to exercise skills to manage these both.
How do we explore this Product discovery?
a) Hook up with the target users. This is a remarkable ongoing drive where we ensure that we find all the probable ways to discover who will be our potential consumers. What needs do they have, what can we offer to bridge those gaps? It is not obvious, though, to identify individuals who will be our users. There are no proven approaches. We require to discover like a hawk who desires our service. There will be a barrier between what we offer and the individuals who look for those services.
b) Problem space and solution space: Both this discovery continues parallelly. We will never be adequate to express that now problem space has saturated or solution space has been completed. Let us concentrate on both spaces continuously,as both these spaces trigger each other to grow and flourish to a new level. Product discovery grows to obtain more value from both spaces. Technology solutions play a key role in satisfying the needs of end-users.
c) Dealing with Uncertainty and Ambiguity: The problem space is full of unknowns. The skill that we need most is an association among all the team members. As problem space deals with unknowns, it is reasonable to get frustrated. Natural to raise stress and anxiety level. It is the support of each other to experiment more, to know the unknown benefits. Rapid prototype and move on is the way forward. There is no point in assuming something and stuck later.
d) Great communication skills and empathy helps: The more numbers of users we can talk, the better. For that, the magnificent tool we are going to use is emotional maturity and awesome communication skills. These skills stimulate us to unearth the unsaid expectations. Substantiate those later with the users.
e) Analysis and research on discovery: There must be some time concentrated on the discovery and extracting insight out of those. As a whole team, we can deep dive and study into our next course of action to be taken based on the unique insights that have emerged. Employ many evaluation tools to work out a comprehensive work here.
f) Success KPI: As a team, we need to discover indicators that are extremely relevant in our context, which reveals that we are moving towards the required direction. This is an ongoing process that encourages us as a team to consider specific, crucial parameters about the problem space and solution space. We continue to expand and ripen our discovery journey
g) What risks are we dealing with: We have to be vigilant about the diverse risks which can jeopardize our discovery process. Locating those risks continually is also another step we require to be conscious about. Risks realization reveals our evolution and diminishes disturbance.
h) Understanding the context: It is essential that many of us from the team have to be masters in the domain so that we are conscious of why? what, and how part. If we are developing a rocket to travel to Venus. We are required to understand space technology and all the pertinent intelligence about that. Product discovery will be efficient when we have team members who are mindful of the context. Not all the team members should know the context; we again require the devil advocate in our team to establish the discovery robustly.
i) Alignment workshop: There are many tools available to align many involved team members to build the solutions. Hackathon, Open space technology, etc facilitation technique we can apply to align our diverse views and come out with a robust solution with shared understanding, We need to tap the collective wisdom to produce the stronger solution, so such workshop is the platform where we are collaborating and aligning for the bigger cause
j) Creating the Maps: There are many tools available that help to create many maps, Journey maps, Empathy maps, Road maps, user journey maps, etc map. All maps have some of the other benefits. Each tool tells some part of the product discovery. Exercise all these and squeeze the benefits from these tools.
k) Right team composition: We require to have the appropriate mixture of individuals from both spaces. Some individuals are excellent at problem space; some individuals are useful at solutions space. Both require diverse skill sets, mindsets, and know-how. In a wonderful product, we have team members to complement each other all the time. Look for this composition and missing elements.
What kind of skills are most needed at the product discovery phase?
Are those same for the product development phase?
From my experience, I have investigated to capture a few predominantly practiced skills during the product discovery phase.
I personally practice these particularly to build my products.
I must say those are demanding skills to employ to discover the unknown. Product development phase we require a bit different skills.
Product discovery phase-related skills will help us build the appropriate product for the customer.
After working with many products, all these findings have been captured and these show a positive outcome.
