Product management is a bit of a mess right now. You’ve probably seen the cycle: a leadership team has a "visionary" idea, the product manager spends three weeks writing requirements, the designers make it look pretty, and the engineers spend three months building it. Then, the feature launches to a resounding silence. Or worse, users hate it.
This is the "build trap," and honestly, most of us are stuck in it.
Enter Teresa Torres continuous discovery. If you haven't heard the name, Torres is the coach who basically wrote the bible on how to stop guessing what users want. Her book, Continuous Discovery Habits, isn't just another business book that could have been a blog post. It's a fundamental shift in how teams actually work day-to-day.
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Most people think "discovery" is a phase. You do it at the start of a project, you "validate" your idea, and then you're done. Torres says that’s nonsense.
The Weekly Heartbeat of Real Discovery
So, what is it? Basically, Teresa Torres continuous discovery is defined as weekly touchpoints with customers, by the team building the product, where they’re conducting small research activities in pursuit of a desired outcome.
Notice the specifics there.
First, it’s weekly. Not once a month. Not once a quarter when you're feeling guilty. Every single week. If you aren't talking to a customer at least once a week, you aren't doing continuous discovery. You’re just doing occasional research.
Second, it’s the team building the product. This means the "Product Trio"—typically a Product Manager, a Designer, and a Lead Engineer. In the old world, the PM would talk to customers and then "hand off" the insights. That doesn't work. Insights get lost in translation. When the engineer hears the customer's frustration firsthand, the way they think about the code changes. It’s visceral.
Why the Opportunity Solution Tree is a Game Changer
If you've looked into this framework at all, you've seen the tree. It's the Opportunity Solution Tree (OST). Most teams start with a solution. "We need a chatbot." "We need a dashboard."
Torres argues this is backwards.
The OST forces you to start with a Desired Outcome. This is a business metric you want to change, like "increase retention by 10%" or "reduce churn." Under that, you map out Opportunities. These are real human needs, pain points, or desires.
The magic happens when you realize that one opportunity can have ten different solutions. Most teams pick one solution and marry it. They become obsessed. With the OST, you’re comparing and contrasting solutions against each other. It’s no longer "Should we build this?" it’s "Which of these three things is most likely to solve this specific customer pain point?"
Stop Validating, Start Testing Assumptions
Here is where most people get tripped up. We’ve been taught to "validate our ideas." Torres hates that word. Validation implies you’re looking for a "yes." It triggers confirmation bias. You'll ignore the three people who struggled with your prototype and focus on the one person who said, "Yeah, looks cool."
Instead of validating a whole solution, you break it down into assumptions.
- Desirability: Do they even want this?
- Viability: Should we build it? Does it work for our business?
- Feasibility: Can we actually build it?
- Usability: Can they figure out how to use it?
- Ethics: Is there a hidden harm here?
Instead of building a full MVP (which usually takes way too long), you run a tiny experiment to test a single, risky assumption. Maybe it’s just a landing page. Maybe it’s a manual "concierge" test. The goal is to fail fast and cheap.
Real World: Snagajob and CarMax
This isn't just theory. Companies like Snagajob and CarMax have famously leaned into these habits. Before adopting Teresa Torres continuous discovery, teams at Snagajob were often stuck in that feature-factory loop—reorging every quarter and shipping MVPs that never got iterated on.
Once they moved to the "trio" model and started interviewing weekly, things shifted. They realized that their assumptions about what job seekers wanted were often dead wrong. By mapping the "Opportunity Space," they could see where they were wasting time on features that didn't actually help people find work.
What Most People Get Wrong
Kinda funny, but the biggest mistake people make is trying to do it perfectly. They spend weeks trying to build the "perfect" Opportunity Solution Tree.
Don't do that.
Your tree is a living document. It’s supposed to be messy. It’s supposed to change every time you talk to a customer. Honestly, the biggest hurdle isn't the framework—it's the logistics. Scheduling interviews is a nightmare. Torres suggests "automating the pipeline." Use tools like Ethnio or even just a pop-up in your app that lets users book time on a shared calendar. If you have to manually hunt for users every week, you’ll quit within a month.
Another big one? Talking to the same "friendly" customers. You know the ones. They love your product, they give you great quotes, and they never challenge you. That’s not discovery; that’s a therapy session. You need to talk to the people who are struggling. The ones who almost cancelled.
How to Actually Start Tomorrow
You don't need a consultant or a three-day workshop to start. Just do this:
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- Identify your Trio. Find your designer and your lead dev. Ask them if they’re tired of building stuff that doesn't get used. They usually are.
- Pick one outcome. Don't try to "fix the whole product." Pick one metric you want to move in the next 90 days.
- Schedule one interview. Just one. For next week. Don't worry about a script. Just ask the customer to tell you a story about the last time they tried to solve the problem your product addresses.
- Map the story. Take what you learned and put it on a wall (or a Miro board). That’s your first "Opportunity."
The beauty of this framework is that it’s sustainable. It’s not a "sprint" that leaves everyone burned out. It’s a habit. Once the rhythm starts, you’ll find it’s actually harder to go back to the old way of guessing.
Building products is risky. Most of what we build fails. Teresa Torres continuous discovery doesn't guarantee success, but it ensures you aren't flying blind. It turns the lights on. And in a market that's moving as fast as this one, that’s usually the difference between winning and just "cranking widgets" until the budget runs out.
Start with the customer story. The rest usually follows.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Audit your current "discovery" process: Are engineers involved before the requirements are written?
- Set up an automated recruitment trigger in your product to fill your weekly interview slot.
- Draft your first Opportunity Solution Tree by starting with a single business KPI and mapping three recent customer complaints as "Opportunities" beneath it.