I LOVE Teresa Torres’s story!! I also LOVE her book and all of the free content she provides through the Product Talk website. I also LOVE doing Opportunity Solution Trees. If you have not worked through an opportunity using this framework I highly recommend you take a chance and try it. Teresa has so many good methods and recommendations through out this podcast but also through out the book. Another favorite is the Trio concept of having a pod of 3 people — a product manager, a designer, and an engineer — work closely together on opportunities and problem spaces. Also key is keeping the trio focused on the outcome vs the output and not slipping into solutioning right away.
The concept of continuous discovery is one that I feel very stongly about. But full transparency it is SO HARD to find a good rhythm. One thing that Teresa recommends is to schedule weekly stakeholder interviews. No break — no deviation — on the calendar every week. I am making a promise here that I am going to start doing this. You literally have nothing to lose and so much to gain with this strategy! I cannot wait to report back on how this works out.
My notes from this podcast:
Opportunity Solution Tree Framework
Visual strategy and levers to get buy in
Do not write this as a solution – have to frame the problem well. Stay focused on the problem and do not slip into the solution.
Continuous discovery
- Decisions on what to build
- Customer has to be included to make good decisions on what to build – feedback loop
- All iterating and improving – never ‘done”
- Continuously deciding what to build
- Always include the customers in those decisions
- Can be done in as little as an interview a week
- Assumption testing is the beginning of building – on push back that there is no time for discovery (people confuses this with research)
- Everything in the backlog is a bet – discovery helps us make a better bet
- Always discovering and always delivering
- Automate the recruiting process
- 1 hour every week to interview a user
- Questions to focus on in the interview
- What needs, pain points, and desires matter most to this customer?
- What matters most to your customer – trumps what you want to learn
- Tell me about a time….
- Conversation should feel like having a beer with a friend
- Ask about the friction moments
- Qualitative interviewing
- Observations are the best way to
- Assumption testing
- Experiments that test the whole idea – too expensive and take too much time
- Break idea into assumptions
- Test just assumptions
- Marshmallow experiment
- Kindergartners outpace MBA student in this experiment
- Kindergartners just start doing
- Product trio
- Well functioning team – disagrees and keeps pushing
- This is the most functional team structure
Where to Listen: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/teresa-torres-on-how-to-interview
Where to find Teresa:
• Product Talk: https://www.producttalk.org/
• Opportunity solution tree: https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-tree/
• Continuous Discovery Habits: https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Discovery-Habits-Discover-Products/dp/1736633309
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresatorres/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ttorres
