How to ship from product delivery to product discovery
😎 What are product delivery and discovery?
There are a lot of articles explaining these 2 concepts. I don’t write more here. In simple words,
- Product Discovery: find out what to build 👀
- Product Delivery: build it 🛠
What’s your focus?
As a product manager, I started focusing on product delivery, e.g. writing product spec, planning for developing cycles, removing development blocks..etc. When I was familiar with shipping, my boss started to give me more things. I didn’t do what he told me; I started to think about what to do.
I’m not saying product discovery is a higher-level thing. Both are important and deep.
It was a career change for me when I realized there are 2️⃣ parts.
Product Managers focus more on discovery
Why? Because I’m not the one who writes code nor designs UI. 🧏♀️
Though I can provide some ideas of solutions, engineers and designers are the professions. And it’s more powerful when they are passionate about providing solutions.
When they are eager to resolve the problem, they are the missionaries. 🦸 🦸♀️
When they do what I say, they are mercenaries. 🤖🤖
Who do you want to work with?
Separate problems and solutions
It’s human nature to solve problems. When a friend complains about an issue to me, my first reaction is to tell him what to do. I want to help him.
However, sometimes, my friend just wants to complain 😅. He doesn’t want to resolve the problem. In this case, my best solution is not to provide solutions but to resonate with his complaints. Which means I don’t get the problem correctly 🥹.
In Marshall’s video at 7:10, he gave a great example.
Your spouse picks a restaurant but it turns out the food tastes awful.
What would you do?
A: Criticize the food. Say the mistake can be fixed early.
B: Shut up and try to enjoy.
What problem do you try to resolve?
A: Pick the great restaurant ever since. 😋
B: Have a great time with your spouse. 🥰
😉 Marshall’s video is not talking mainly about problem-solving. I borrow this part for a different concept. However, his talk, What get you here won’t get you there, is amazing and funny. You will enjoy and learn a ton.
Defining problems matters
Matters for life. Matters for PM.
As a product manager, I want the product I build to have an impact. I want to resolve the right problem so my effort paid off. I don’t want to spend effort but no one cares.
Outcome first 📍
What impact do you want to make? Don’t jump into the problem too fast. Think twice about what’s the real problem. 😋 vs 🥰 ?
Remember to check in the outcome along the way. It’s possible to lose the outcome when we too focus on the solutions 🙈.
Teresa has a great example.
People discussed what fruit they wanted to bring when sailing across the Atlantic in the 1500s. The discussion started from Oranges to Apples which ended up not resolving the problem.
The “problem” is not just a problem, a bug. It means needs 🙂, pains 😫, and desires 😍. Teresa uses “opportunity” instead.
e.g. The opportunities for a coffee store.
As a customer,
Needs 🙂: I want to take out a cup of coffee to my office.
Pains 😫: It takes me 20 min to buy the coffee so I need to wake up earlier.
Desires 😍: One day I was exhausted. The staff noticed and recommended me another coffee I never tried before which healed me that day.
The problem comes not only from the users but also from the company. Both sides are important ⚖️.
Gibson gave a great example in Lenny’s podcast.
Netflix Party was a feature developed by an engineering team in Netflix. People can chat, and interact with their friends while watching the same movie. Sounds great! 🥳 There is a need, especially after COVID we get used to online networking. However, they estimated the usage might be 2% only. For the 2%, it’s not worth adding the complexity.
It’s hard. Many principles need to be traded off. That’s what a strong product team does! 💪
As a user, I want to find answers (needs 🙂) for free (desires 😍).
As a company, I want to make money.
= Advertising! 😆
How to shift more focus on product discovery
Mindset shifting 🧘♀️
Separate problems and solutions, and spend more time defining problems. Rely more on the engineers' and designers’ professions.
Problem-solving techniques 🙌
OST, Opportunity Solution Tree, developed by Teresa. It’s like a solution tree but starts from opportunities.
- Align with the company’s strategy to pick up opportunities.
- Regroup to make it a tree, parent-children opportunities, and distinct peer ones.
- Develop many solutions for an opportunity so we can compare and contrast.
4S framework from Cracked it, introduced by the co-author Bernard.
- State: write down to understand the problem.
- Structure: break down the problem.
- Solve: find out the solutions.
- Sell: convince the stakeholder this is the best solution.
BCG problem solving, a book written in Chinese, introduces:
- 3 steps for problem-solving. Asks
- Is it true? Find the facts.
- So what? What’s the impact?
- Why so? The reason behind the problems.
- Find the sweet spot that can resolve the problem with sufficient but not too many resources.
In the above 3 methodologies, all mention discovery.
When you understand the problem, you usually have the solutions in mind.
Invite engineers and designers to solve problems
How do you invite others to solve problems? 🤝
Describe the problems. Provide the context.
It’s human nature to solve problems. Especially engineers and designers are the best problem solvers.
It works when I describe something that may go wrong to engineers. It works when I describe real user cases to designers.
😉 It also works when engineers ask questions to PM. Learn Tricks — Pick something stupid from Ron Jeffries.
🤩 I’m happy to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn Karen Hsieh or Twitter @ijac_wei.
🙋🙋♀️ Welcome to Ask Me Anything.
