Discover, Iterate, Succeed: 7 persuasive factors for implementing Continuous Discovery

Continuous Discovery is the product discovery process that is applied throughout the lifecycle of a product. It goes continuously along with development. Continuous discovery helps in refining the process, based on customers’ requirements and feedback, so that the product delivers more value and can improve continuously with time.

This helps a lot in making a solid product strategy and plan as per the market requirements. A continuous discovery process improves the chances of delivering a customer likable product. Because their feedback has been taken into consideration while developing.

Continuous discovery requires having regular conversations with customers/users with the product teams to propel the decision-making process and reach desired outcomes. It requires regular and frequent customer feedback and therefore continuous interaction with the customers is required.

We need a continuous discovery process to drive a continuous delivery process and reach our business goals.

Continuous discovery needs continuous interaction and feedback from the customers because decisions are taken accordingly daily and changes are done based on customer feedback.

If a product team goes only for product delivery and does not incorporate continuous discovery in their process, chances are that they have to struggle for their product to be accepted and fit in the market. Because a product that does not involve its customers in the conversation and does not seek their feedback about the product has to struggle later on, as customers themselves decouple from the product after a few days of usage. So it is very important to keep your customer in the loop and make them feel that they are valued.

Asking for customers’ consent, however, does not mean that they should tell us what to build and how to build. Involving customers is not about jumping to respond to every request and suggestion.

We are involving customers in the conversations to better understand their needs, their pain points, their expectations, and their likings. In this way, we are trying to proceed toward making a more customer-centric and customer-lovable product.

Customer insights provide an idea about where we should focus and at what time, and what things to prioritize. Because if we’re not creating offerings based on customer needs, we may not be able to sell them.

Reasons to Adopt Continuous Discovery

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It is relatively easy to launch your product/service, but what is difficult is to sustain. Studies show that worldwide approximately 137000 businesses are launched every day but nearly 70% of the new businesses do not even see the third year of their existence. And the topmost reason behind their failure is that these businesses are not solving any pressing problem for their customers and many even realize it too late that the product or service they are offering is not exactly what customers require.

Continuous discovery helps you here by continuously checking on your product can help in ensuring that you are providing a valuable product that is solving customers’ problems.

This also saves a lot of your time, effort, and money that would otherwise be spent on addressing different issues later on. Below are some of the reasons to go for continuous discovery practice.

• It helps in delivering more value and keeps you more aligned with your goals.
• It helps in building a customer-oriented product.
• It avoids conflicts of opinion within the team.
• Keeps the team in harmony and aligned towards a common goal.
• Helps in early detection and correction of the issue in production.
• Helps in the process of prioritization.
• The change in the integration process i.e. rather than integrating as a phase, integrating early and frequently, can save a lot of time, effort, and money. The same is with testing.

Continuous discovery is a mindset and as per the writer “ Teresa Torres “, there are three mindsets that promote success with continuous discovery. These are Collaborative, Continuous, and Experimental mindsets.

A collaborative mindset includes people who, despite their differences, however, work together in deciding how best to achieve the outcome(s).

Continuous mindset people believe that the teams should see their tasks as ongoing. There is always scope for learning.

An experimental mindset includes teams that should be ready to use a variety of testing tools instead of simply following traditional practices.

Continuous delivery is a learning process and you can’t be perfect from day one. Just like other processes, it takes time and regular effort. It is all about discovering that hidden hook that will help your product grow exponentially, and that can only happen by continuously being in conversation with your customers and coming up with more experiments.