Never stop problem discovery
The product management process is quite long. We need to go through various phases where we understand customer needs (problem discovery), decide which problem to focus on (problem selection), then we must generate ideas to solve that problem (solution discovery), before converging on the final solution and delivering it (solution delivery).
I’ve mapped this process out in a Product Management Double Diamond before:
It will take most teams several months to get through this whole process, from first talking to customers to delivering them a final feature/product. Therefore, we can’t wait until we have finished one solution before we go back to the beginning and start looking for our next problem to solve.
Instead, we need to be seeing “Problem Discovery” as continuous. As soon as we are ready to select a problem, we do so. But problem discovery doesn’t stop. We always continue. We always need to be trying to understand customer needs. We should never stop talking to customers.
If we are constantly talking to customers, then we are always ready to converge on a problem. At any point we can look at the user problems/needs/desires that we have uncovered, and select the one that makes the most sense to solve (for the customer and the business) at the time.
This is especially true as sometimes we have to kill an opportunity. After we have selected a problem, we may find that it is not viable for the business to solve it (e.g. it will be too expensive / technically complex). In which case, we have to go back a step and select a new problem. We shouldn’t be scared of doing this, but we can only be confident of doing this if we can quickly pick up the next problem off the list that we have already discovered.
If we don’t have a list of potential opportunities (customer problems/needs/desires are opportunities to create value), then it means we are more likely to commit to the solution we have started working on, even though we have now realised that it is unlikely to deliver value. It feels too painful to go back to the beginning. Having a list of potential opportunities allows us to pivot quickly, to be agile.
Conclusion
The full product management process is lengthy. We can’t wait to deliver one solution before we start to think about the next. We need to be doing problem discovery continuously, so that we always have a list of user problems/needs/desires, allowing us to converge on a problem to solve as soon as we are ready.
