Discovery Activities​
over The Discovery

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 reducing the uncertainty that matters most?"

Discovery isn't about running a prescribed set of activities—interviews, prototypes, opportunity solution trees—because you're supposed to. It's about identifying your riskiest assumptions and testing them as cheaply as possible before you commit engineering capacity and organizational credibility.

When you "plan a quarter for Discovery," you create pushback. You're telling stakeholders: "We don't know what we're doing, but trust us for three months." They hear: "No progress, just exploration." The resistance is predictable.

Better framing: Discovery is continuous, not ceremonial.

Every product decision carries assumptions—about user behavior, technical feasibility, competitive dynamics, business impact. Discovery is the ongoing practice of stress-testing those assumptions before they become expensive mistakes. Sometimes that takes a week. Sometimes it takes an hour and a spreadsheet.

The team planning a Freemium launch doesn't need "a Discovery phase." They need clarity on their most critical, least proven assumptions:

• We believe new users will convert at 3%
• We believe a freemium offer will not cannibalize our enterprise pipeline?

Then they need the fastest, cheapest way to get reliable signal—not a ritual.

This changes how you work:

• Discovery isn't separate from execution—it's a continuous responsibility with ebbing and flowing intensity
• You don't "sell" Discovery to stakeholders—you show them the cost of being wrong
• You don't measure Discovery by how many interviews you did—you measure it by how much uncertainty you reduced

When the last 15 minutes of a session around Discovery feel like "preparing to execute a plan," stop. Ask: What could make this plan fail? What don't we know yet that we can't afford to be wrong about?

That's Discovery. Not a phase. A discipline you practice whenever the cost of being wrong is higher than the cost of learning

What Readers Say about my Book

“I’ve watched countless product teams get stuck in what Tim calls ‘Alibi Progress’—working on unrealistic goals meant to impress leadership rather than create real value for customers. Tim’s Progress Wheel connects strategy, goals, and discovery into a unified theory that actually works. Essential reading for any PM tired of spinning their wheels.” Ravi Mehta, Product Advisor | Previously CPO @ Tinder, Product @ Facebook, TripAdvisor, Xbox.

Thank you for Practicing Product,

Tim

Join my In-Person Workshops in Berlin

I'm excited to bring my beloved in-person workshops back to Berlin in January 2026. You can choose between 1-day workshops on Product Strategy, Product OKRs, or Product Discovery, or opt for the full 3-day experience for you or your team.

(reach out for custom team quotes)

If you consume one thing this week, make it this...

HOW TO: make continuous discovery part of your development processes Read it here

Who is Tim Herbig?

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.