1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
🛠️ Don't turn Continuous Discovery into Dogmatic Discovery
Don't turn Continuous Discovery into Dogmatic Discovery​Dear Reader,​ When I recently talked to Vivek Kumar for my work-in-progress book, this insight stood out: "The biggest moat you can always have is how fast you can learn." And a recurring theme in a recent Product Discovery workshop was to hold every decision in Product Discovery against "whether it helps reduce lead-time to actionable insights (aka lead-time until we reduce uncertainty). One of the main reasons I see product teams neglect the importance of that lead time is that they stick to a rigid order of activities at all costs. They get stuck in dogmatic Product Discovery. As your teams become more comfortable with deliberate Product Discovery and learn better practices, they may adopt a rigid, Dogmatic adherence to different “rules” of discovery. This represents a significant step forward from Alibi Discovery because it means teams are actively thinking about and incorporating systematized Product Discovery, but it comes with downsides. Characteristics of this state:
Clear signs you have to move on: Teams feel that the discovery process and act get in their way of creating value. Completing a Discovery task gets more priority than the quality of insights generated and decisions made, and the seemingly irrational volume of work raises questions. Did you enjoy this one or have feedback? Do reply. It's motivating. I'm not a robot; I read and respond to every subscriber email I get (just ask around). If this newsletter isn't for you anymore, you can unsubscribe here. Thank you for Practicing Product, ​Tim​ How to Dive Deeper into Product DiscoveryLearn how I helped companies like Deutsche Telekom and Forto hone their Product Discovery practices. I closely work with product organizations through workshops and coaching to introduce and adapt Product Discovery.
What did you think of this week's newsletter? As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I identify and share the patterns among better practices to connect the dots of Product Strategy, Product OKRs, and Product Discovery. |
Product Practice Newsletter
1 tip & 3 resources per week to improve your Strategy, OKRs, and Discovery practices in less than 5 minutes. Explore my new book on realprogressbook.com
Product Practice #402 Product Discovery forInternal Enabler Teams PUBLISHED Apr 2, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Because the customers of your product just sit three desks away, you might think you can just "talk to them." And that's precisely what often leads to the low adoption of better product practices among product teams working on internal products (also sometimes called Enabler Teams). And why, when a user has a company email address, it is likely nobody's doing discovery on...
Product Practice #401 How to Close Your Confidence Loop PUBLISHED Mar 26, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, Most teams can tell you what they're building. Far fewer can tell you why it matters and how they will know it has worked. And I mean in a connected, defensible way that traces from their next release or discovery back to a company goal. That gap is where confidence lives (or doesn't). The confidence loop describes the critical questions you need to be able to answer and connect to...
Product Practice #400 Get your North Star Metric Reviewed by me PUBLISHED Mar 19, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Dear Reader, To celebrate the 400th edition of this newsletter (🥳), I thought, why not try something different: Share your current North Star Metric and some high-level context with me through the form below, and I'll send you a personalized review video - for FREE and without AI processing. Just me, in front of a camera, sharing my thoughts on your North Star Metric. There's no hook,...