continuous-discoverylisted

# Continuous Discovery — Weekly Contact, Opportunity Trees ## Overview Continuous discovery (Teresa Torres, *Continuous Discovery Habits*, 2021) replaces one-off research with a **weekly cadence of customer touchpoints by the team building the product**, structured around an **opportunity solution tree**: one outcome → the opportunities (unmet needs) that drive it → competing solutions → assumption tests. It keeps roadmaps anchored to real needs instead of the loudest stakeholder. ## When to Use - A product with users but no steady learning loop - Roadmap fights decided by seniority, not evidence - Turning a fuzzy outcome (e.g. "increase activation") into shippable bets ## The Process 1. **Pick one clear outcome** (a behavior/metric, not a feature). *Gate: if the target is a feature, back up to the outcome it serves.* 2. **Interview weekly** — the trio (PM/design/eng), small and continuous, not a quarterly study. 3. **Map opportunities** as a tree under the outcome; keep them as customer needs, not solutions in disguise. 4. **Diverge on solutions** per opportunity (≥3), then converge. 5. **Test the riskiest assumption cheaply** before building (desirability, viability, feasibility, usability). 6. **Prune to the next bet.** *Gate: no assumption test run = you're shipping opinion → stop and test.* ## Applying It Well - Automate recruiting so weekly interviews actually happen (the habit dies on scheduling friction). - One opportunity tree per outcome; don't boil the ocean. -