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Ask Teresa: Do Product Teams Really Ship Value Weekly?

Ask Teresa: Do Product Teams Really Ship Value Weekly?

A good continuous discovery team is interviewing customers, mapping opportunities, and testing assumptions every week. But for teams new to discovery, it can be hard to find time for all of these new activities. Part of that is because they are still thinking about discovery as a phase that happens

Ask Teresa: For Customer Interviews, Who Counts as a Customer?

Ask Teresa: For Customer Interviews, Who Counts as a Customer?

Whenever I introduce the topic of customer interviews (the foundational element of continuous discovery), I get a lot of questions about who counts as a customer. Everyone thinks their company context is unique—whether they’re B2B or B2B2C or some other combination of letters and numbers. And while yes,

Ask Teresa: What Do You Do with Atypical Customer Stories?

Ask Teresa: What Do You Do with Atypical Customer Stories?

When we interview customers, our goal is to learn as much as we can about their context. This will help us understand their specific needs, pain points, and desires (otherwise known as opportunities) which will inform our product decisions. But what happens when you hear a story that stands out

Ask Teresa (and the Community): What Do You Do With Stakeholder Feature Requests?

Ask Teresa (and the Community): What Do You Do With Stakeholder Feature Requests?

Let’s say you’ve got a good thing going with continuous discovery. You’re creating a regular habit of talking to customers, you’re identifying opportunities and assumptions and building out your opportunity solution tree and starting to run small tests to explore different ideas. Everything is going great

Ask Teresa: My Leaders Still Want Roadmaps with Timelines—What Should I Do?

Ask Teresa: My Leaders Still Want Roadmaps with Timelines—What Should I Do?

Many teams, like sales and marketing, have time-bound goals, like reaching $X in bookings or generating Y leads by a specific date. Product teams are also held to time-bound goals. Empowered product teams, for example, are asked to deliver outcomes each quarter. But sometimes companies take this too far. They

Ask Teresa: What’s the Difference Between OKRs and Outcomes?

Ask Teresa: What’s the Difference Between OKRs and Outcomes?

What's the difference between OKRs and outcomes? This is by far one of the most common questions I get and there are lots of ways to answer it. Defining the Terms: OKRs vs. Outcomes Here's my response: First, an OKR is comprised of an objective and

Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren’t Your Users?

Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren’t Your Users?

At its core, product discovery is a simple concept. By talking to our customers regularly, we can collect insights into their unique problems, needs, and desires (or what I often refer to as “opportunities”). We then use these insights to guide the products we build. However, many people worry that