196. The Missing Half of Agile: How to Infuse Continuous Discovery Into Product Development, with Teresa Torres

The Innovation Engine Podcast

In this episode, we're joined by Teresa Torres, an internationally recognized author, speaker, and coach. With a focus on continuous discovery, Teresa has coached hundreds of product teams of all sizes and industries in a structured approach to infusing customer input into their daily product decisions. Her expertise has helped product teams move away from simply focusing on Agile execution and how they build products towards a more holistic approach to development that places an equal focus on making sure what they build delivers value to the customer and the business.

Teresa’s expertise has helped product teams move away from simply focusing on Agile execution and how they build products towards a more holistic approach to product development where teams place an equal focus on making sure what they build delivers value to the customer and the business.

We dive deep into the key concepts of Teresa's book, Continuous Discovery Habits, in which she introduces a framework for product teams to think about customer discovery. We explore the importance of an outcome mindset, getting good at interviewing to discover unmet customer needs, pain points, and desires, and assumption testing to help evaluate solutions.
Episode Highlights:

• How product teams can learn to focus on executing on the right things, not just executing in the right way

• The most vital habits that teams should employ for continuous discovery

• Why following Teresa’s collaborative “product trio” model, where a Product Manager, Design Lead, and Tech Lead all work closely together from the start, leads to far less waste than the traditional product development model and process

• How embracing the creative tension of bringing multiple disciplines together yields better results than the top-down style of decision-making prevalent in many organizations

• The 2 different kinds of product instrumentation — optimization and value creation — and examples of both

• Which companies are positive examples of continuous discovery in action (hint: not many!)

Resources:

• Learn more at ProductTalk.org

• Follow Teresa on Twitter: @ttorres

• Connect with Teresa on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/teresatorres

• Read: Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres

Learn more and get the full show notes at: 3PillarGlobal.com