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
Why Your 'Correct' Discovery Method Might Be Wrong
Why Your 'Correct' Discovery Method Might Be WrongDear Reader, "Which experiment should we run next?" This question comes up in almost every Discovery coaching session I facilitate. Teams often focus on finding the methodologically perfect way to test their assumptions. But here's the thing: the most technically correct experiment isn't always the right one to run. When choosing methods for Product Discovery, we often focus on what fits our research question or assumption best. Say you want to understand how users perceive features in your product. A diary study might be the perfect method—capturing real usage patterns over time. But what if it takes three months to get reliable insights? A series of well-structured interviews or shadowing sessions might get you 80% of the way there in just two weeks. Several factors determine your lead time to insight:
Here's another way to think about it: An A/B test might seem quick to start—taking just hours or days to implement. But depending on your traffic and conversion rates, it could take weeks or months to reach statistical significance. In contrast, while recruiting participants for qualitative interviews might take two weeks, you could have reliable insights within days of completing them. Neither method is inherently better. What matters is the total time to reliable insight, not just how quickly you can get started. So, when picking your next Discovery priority, ask yourself:
Here's a practical tip: When evaluating lead time, avoid abstract scoring systems. Instead, estimate the actual duration by adding:
This concrete timeline helps you make practical trade-offs between methods. Remember: The goal isn't to achieve perfect certainty. It's to reduce uncertainty enough to make confident decisions about what to build next. Did you enjoy the newsletter? Please forward it. It only takes two clicks. Creating this one took two hours. Thank you for Practicing Product, Tim Good News!Some last tickets are available for my in-person Product Discovery workshop on March 10 in London (as part of Mind the Product conference).
As a Product Management Coach, I guide Product Teams to measure the real progress of their evidence-informed decisions. I focus on 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 #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,...
Product Practice #399 How to Connect Strategy,Goals and Discovery PUBLISHED Mar 12, 2026 READ ON HERBIG.CO Most product teams don't have a strategy or OKR problem. They have a connection problem. My new Progress Wheel Intensive is a full-day working session for ambitious product teams where we fix that together — using your actual product context, not hypotheticals. Book a call to talk about it. Dear Reader, Often, the core concepts I share on how teams can make real progress by connecting...