Foreword: Chris Mercuri

Working in a product role is hard. There is huge pressure to solve customer problems and drive business value. Everyone is looking to you for answers. How do you come up with the right answers more often? If you’re like me, you’ve searched all over, looking for a guide that can tell you how to do great product discovery. Most books promise a whole lot—plenty of the “what” but little of the “how.” You are often left wondering what to do next.

Eventually my team and I got the opportunity to go through the Continuous Discovery Habits coaching program, which lays out the key elements of an end-to-end modern product discovery approach (the same approach you’ll learn in this book). The curriculum covers how to set outcomes, uncover customer problems, prioritize, come up with creative solutions, test assumptions quickly, and a lot more. What did we gain from practicing the habits, and what can you expect to gain from reading this book?

We went from chopping and changing our discovery approach and needing lots of meetings to work out what to do next to a more structured discovery process. People knew what was expected of them and delivered more consistent results.

We shifted away from a more superficial understanding of our customers. Instead of relying on heavy, infrequent research, we developed a deeper understanding of the customer’s needs, problems, and desires through regular contact and lightweight research methods.

We shifted away from having lists of metrics to increase and outputs to deliver. Now we have fewer goals, more clarity, and a focus on solving the customer’s problem in ways that drive business value.

We shifted away from falling in love with a single idea and building it. Now we come up with many ideas. And we learn faster by testing sets of ideas and running smaller simulations.

We shifted away from discovery and delivery being separate responsibilities. Now there’s more collaboration, with most of the team involved in customer interviews, mapping the customer journey, ideating on solutions, and discussing results. The whole team contributes at key points along the way, and we learn and adjust our course together.

With our leaders, we no longer wait to show them big reports and presentations. Now we have the tools to show them our thinking earlier and have better conversations about where to go next.

By applying the Continuous Discovery Habits, we improved customer and business outcomes, but the reward for the team was even bigger—confidence. The habits gave us the confidence that we knew what we were doing. And after a few wins, we started to believe that we could achieve anything.

I wish that I had been introduced to the Continuous Discovery Habits much earlier in my career. If you study this book and practice the habits, product work will still be hard, and you will still make plenty of mistakes. But you will make better product decisions, and the chances that you will succeed will dramatically increase.

Chris Mercuri

Product Manager

February 2021