Caitlin shares with Product Anonymous how Seek have been working with Teresa Torres to improve their product management practice with continuous discovery + use of Opportunity tree's.

1. Continuous Discovery
- Worth the effort?
Product Anonymous
Caitlin Blackwell
27 June 2019

2. Caitlin Blackwell
Acting Head of
Product – Candidate
Experience
SEEK ANZ

3. Agenda
1. What is discovery and why do it?
2. Continuous Discovery Framework
3. Successes and failures

4. “McKinsey investigated 1,048 business
decisions over 5 years, tracking both the way
decisions were made and the subsequent
outcomes. These were major decisions such
as launching a new product or service,
changing the structure of an organisation or
an acquisition. They found that the decision
making process mattered more than analysis
by a factor of 6.”
Discovery is about driving better decision making

5. 5
What do
Product
Managers
do?

6. Unstructured
Variable approaches
A developing craft
1. Discovery
Deciding what to
build
Work out the
most valuable
thing to build
Highly structured
Agreed approaches
Mature
2. Delivery
Building it
Delivering the
most value
quickly
? ?

7. 1. Discover
what the
customer
solution needs
to be
If you get discovery
wrong then what you
deliver could be wasted
effort

8. We encounter the ‘villains of decision
making.’
Why are we wrong?
Narrow framing: we unduly
limit the options we consider and so
we don’t focus on the biggest
opportunities & don’t generate enough
compelling solutions
Lack of clarity on
the problem
Short term emotion
Confirmation bias
Overconfidence

9. We don’t test our critical assumptions early
enough and they fail to be true
Why are we wrong?
Customers don’t
want it
(the value isn't there)
It’s too hard to
use (the usability isn't
there);
There are business
constraints that block the
solution from launch (the
business viability isn't
there)
It’s too costly or
time consuming to
deliver (the feasibility
isn't there);
It’s not the right
thing to do (we
uncover ethical issues);

10. So how can we be
right more often?

11. Continuous Discovery
3. Size needs
and pick one
2. Speak to customers
regularly, map their
needs
1. Agree desired business
outcome (i.e. your OKR)
4. Ideate and validate
assumptions through
experiments

12. Step 1
3. Size needs
and pick one
2. Speak to customers
regularly, map their
needs
1. Agree desired business
outcome (i.e. your OKR)
4. Ideate and validate
assumptions through
experiments

13. 1. Agree Team’s Desired Outcome
Objectives Key Results Key ideas/initiatives
• Help SME hirers
efficiently
identify suitable
candidates to
interview
• Increase hirer sat
score from x to y
• Increase shortlist
rate from x to y
• Hirer filters
• Add more detail to candidate
card
• Matching tool
Objectives
• Grow use of
product

14. Step 2
3. Size needs
and pick one
2. Speak to customers
regularly, map their
needs
1. Agree desired business
outcome (i.e. your OKR)
4. Ideate and validate
assumptions through
experiments

15. 2. Speak to customers and map their needs

16. 2. Speak to customers and map their needs
Desired outcome
Opportunity/Need
Solution

17. “What’s in the spotlight will rarely be
everything we need to make a good
decision. Sometimes we’ll forget there’s
a spotlight at all dwelling so long in the
tiny circle of light that we forget there’s
a broader landscape beyond it.”
Daniel Kahneman

18. Step 3
3. Size needs
and pick one
2. Speak to customers
regularly, map their
needs
1. Agree desired business
outcome (i.e. your OKR)
4. Ideate and validate
assumptions through
experiments

19. 3. Size Opportunities & pick one

20. Step 4
3. Size needs
and pick one
2. Speak to customers
regularly, map their
needs
1. Agree desired business
outcome (i.e. your OKR)
4. Ideate and validate
assumptions through
experiments

21. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

22. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

23. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

24. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments
Theresa May

25. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments
Important and
unknown

26. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

27. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

28. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

29. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

30. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments
Fogg Model

31. Use case: I don’t want to commute too far, so I want to ONLY see jobs
close to me

32. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

33. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments

34. 4. Ideate and validate assumptions through experiments 34
From this… … to this … and finally this

35. Where to start?
1. If you can only do one thing, start by talking to customers and
asking them how they use your product.
Everything in discovery flows from this.
2. You don’t need to be using OKRs to pick your desired outcome,
just find a metric in your product you are looking to shift eg
revenue, churn, acquisition

36. Where to start?
3. Go broad with ideas – go for quantity first. Blind vote.
4. Some form of assumption mapping is essential if you want to
learn before you build

37. Where to start?
5. Visual sensemaking tools help you stay aligned, and avoid
some of the opinion battles
6. In experimenting aim to learn something on your assumptions,
rather than the most definitive answer.
Challenge yourself: what can I learn in a week?

38. Further reading
• An Introduction to Modern Product Discovery -
Teresa Torres YouTube
• Decisive – Chip and Dan Heath
• Inspired – Marty Cagan
• Teresa Torres blog producttalk.org, videos and
podcast interviews