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 #383 When to recognizeYour OKR Planning takes too long READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Nov 6, 2025 READING TIME 5 min & 37 sec Dear Reader, It's week three of Q4 planning. Your team has revised the OKRs five times. Leadership wants one more alignment session. The quarter starts in a week, but you haven't actually begun working toward the goals yet. The moment you're tweaking wording instead of committing to a strategic goal, you've crossed from Real Progress into Alibi Progress....
Product Practice #382 Discovery Activitiesover The Discovery READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 30, 2025 READING TIME 3 min & 52 sec Dear Reader, Most teams treat Discovery like a season: "We'll do Discovery for Q1, then build in Q2." This creates a problem. It separates learning from building, makes stakeholders impatient, and turns Discovery into something you have to defend rather than a practical way to reduce uncertainty. The real question isn't "Are we doing Discovery?" It's "Are we...
Product Practice #381 How to ConnectNorth Star Metrics and OKRs READ ON HERBIG.CO PUBLISHED Oct 23, 2025 READING TIME 5 min & 25 sec Dear Reader, I once worked with a team whose OKRs read like a best of every company's KPI dashboard: user engagement up 15%, conversion rate improved by 10%, feature adoption increased by 20%. When I asked how these connected to the specific intentions they want to pursue to drive long-term customer and business value, they couldn't link them. Their OKRs looked...