CDH Book Club

Let's Read Continuous Discovery Habits Together (June 2026)

Continuous Discovery Habits turns five this year. And to celebrate we are reading the book together.

Each month, I am releasing an in-depth reading guide that includes:

The chapters we will be reading
A preview of the most important concepts we'll be learning about
Short videos you can share with friends and colleagues to help spread the ideas
Individual and team discussion questions to help you absorb and engage with the reading
Team exercises to help you put the ideas into practice
Additional reading to help you go deeper on the core ideas

We'll be discussing each month's reading in the comment section and we'll gather quarterly to discuss on a live call.

Joining late? No problem. I monitor the comments on each reading guide throughout the year. Start with the current month or go back to January—whatever works for you. You can ask for help, share what's working, and connect with other readers at any point.

If you want to participate, grab a copy of the book (or dig up your old copy), share the "Spread the Love" videos, reserve some time to do the team exercises, and register for the community sessions. Let's do this!

This Month's Reading

Chapter:

Chapter 7: Prioritizing Opportunities, Not Solutions

Estimated reading time: ~16 minutes

This month's chapter will introduce you to:

Why product strategy happens in the opportunity space, not the solution space
How to focus on one target opportunity at a time to deliver value iteratively
Using the tree structure to simplify prioritization decisions
The four criteria for assessing opportunities: sizing, market factors, company factors, and customer factors
Why treating prioritization as a messy, subjective decision leads to better outcomes than scoring formulas
The concept of two-way door decisions and how they apply to opportunity prioritization

Need a copy? Grab the book

We learn best in community. Use the following short videos to share the key concepts from this chapter with friends and colleagues. Invite them to participate in the book club with you.

Work on one small opportunity at a time - Reduce your batch size
Getting started with compare and contrast decisions - Choose the right target opportunity
Turn big intractable problems into smaller, more solvable problems - The power of decomposition

Reflect & Discuss What You Read

When we reflect and discuss what we read, we absorb more of the material. It helps us put what we learn into practice. Don't skip this step.

This chapter challenges a deeply ingrained habit: prioritizing solutions. Most product teams spend countless hours ranking features in spreadsheets, debating roadmaps, and arguing over what to build next. But this chapter makes the case that product strategy doesn't happen in the solution space—it happens in the opportunity space. The opportunities we choose to address define our competitive position far more than the features we ship.

Individual Reflection

Think about your team's current roadmap or backlog. How much of your time is spent prioritizing features versus understanding and prioritizing customer opportunities? What would change if you flipped that ratio?
Reflect on the last time you made a product decision. Did you treat it as a one-way door (irreversible) or a two-way door (reversible)? How did that framing affect your decision-making process and timeline?
Consider the four assessment criteria (opportunity sizing, market factors, company factors, customer factors). Which of these does your team currently emphasize most? Which do you tend to overlook or underweight?

Team Discussion

As a team, list the top 5-10 items on your current roadmap or backlog. For each one, try to identify the underlying customer opportunity it addresses. If you can't clearly articulate the opportunity, what does that tell you about how you're making decisions?
The chapter argues against scoring formulas (like RICE or ICE) for prioritization, calling them "made-up math." If your team uses a scoring system, discuss: What is it really measuring? Does it help you make better decisions, or does it just make subjective decisions feel more objective?
Walk through a recent prioritization decision. Did you assess options in isolation ("should we build this?") or compare and contrast them? How might your decision have been different with a compare-and-contrast approach?

Put It Into Practice

This month is all about shifting from solution-first to opportunity-first thinking. These exercises will help you practice prioritizing opportunities and making faster, better decisions about which customer needs to address.

Exercise: Map Your Roadmap to Opportunities

Time: 45 minutes
Do this: With your product trio

Take your current roadmap or backlog and work backwards. For each planned feature or solution:

Identify the customer opportunity it's meant to address
Write it as something a customer might say (e.g., "I can't find anything to watch" not "We need better search")
Look for patterns: Are multiple solutions addressing the same opportunity? Are some solutions disconnected from any clear customer need?

This exercise often reveals that you're either:

Spreading yourself thin across too many opportunities
Over-investing in a single opportunity with multiple solutions
Building solutions with no clear opportunity attached

Use these insights to inform your next prioritization conversation.

Exercise: Practice Two-Way Door Thinking

Time: 30 minutes
Do this: With your product trio

Choose 3-5 recent or upcoming product decisions. For each one, discuss:

Is this a one-way door decision (hard to reverse) or a two-way door decision (easy to reverse)?
If it's a two-way door, what's the smallest step we could take to learn whether we're on the right track?
What would we need to see to know we made the wrong choice?
If we realize we're wrong, how quickly could we course-correct?

The goal is to calibrate your team's decision-making speed. Two-way door decisions should be made quickly with "just enough" evidence. One-way door decisions deserve more deliberation and data.

Go Deeper: Additional Reading

If you prefer an audio summary of this month's reading, including the book chapters and the following resources, I've included an audio version for paid subscribers at the bottom of this post.

Supplementary Reading

Product Discovery Fundamentals: Learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery.

Our Live Discussion Schedule

Our live discussion sessions are for paid subscribers. Sessions are not recorded. Invitations will go out to Supporting Members and CDH Members two weeks before the scheduled event. But reserve the time on your calendar now.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026: 9am-10am PDT
Thursday, September 17, 2026: 9am-10am PDT
Wednesday, December 16, 2026: 9am-10am PST

Audio Summary

This summary was produced by NotebookLM. The sources supplied were the book chapters as well as all of the additional reading.

June Prioritizing Opportunities

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This article is part of the CDH Book Club celebrating the 5-year anniversary of Continuous Discovery Habits. See all book club posts

Let's Read Continuous Discovery Habits Together (June 2026)

This Month's Reading