Discovery Principles & Operating System
Set up the habits, roles, rules, and rhythms that make discovery continuous. This module teaches what discovery is, how to run it every week with a small team, how to keep it ethical and privacy-safe, and how to aim it at outcomes. Lessons are practical, tool-agnostic, and designed to avoid overlap with recruiting, repositories, governance, or collaboration deep-dives covered in later modules.
Lessons
Introduction to product discovery
Outcomes over outputs in discovery
The product trio: roles that make discovery work
How to set a weekly discovery rhythm
How to write a 4-week discovery plan
How to pick the right discovery question
How to define discovery objectives and success signals
How to kick off your discovery week
Keep discovery small and frequent
Ethics 101: treat people with care
How to ask for consent in plain language
How to handle and store research data safely
Avoiding leading questions and pitching ideas
Reduce bias in discovery decisions
How to prep the trio for a user session
How to run a clean 30-minute interview
How to do a quick usability walkthrough in discovery
Making discovery visible to the team
How to turn every research finding into clear next steps
Know when to stop a line of inquiry
How to set a lightweight definition of done for discovery questions
Track discovery health with a few simple checks
How to protect time for discovery inside delivery
Working well in remote and mixed time zones
Handle pushback on discovery time
How to create a small discovery backlog
Balance discovery with delivery without thrash
How to prepare a one-slide weekly insight
Discovery anti-patterns to avoid
Part of Product Discovery
Master product discovery: methods, cadence, and opportunity mapping that turn insights into action.
View full courseOther modules in this course
Recruiting System & Sampling
Build a repeatable system to find, screen, schedule, and maintain the right participants every week.
Discovery Methods Toolbox
Pick the right research method for the question. Learn how to run interviews, surveys, product data checks, quick prototypes, diary studies, and usability tests.
Insight Pipeline & Repository (AI-assist)
Build a clean insight pipeline from capture to synthesis, then store findings in a simple, searchable repository.
Opportunity Mapping Methods
Turn raw insights into a clear map of opportunities that tie to outcomes.
Assumption Mapping & Risk Reduction
Identify what must be true for your idea to succeed, map those assumptions by importance and evidence, then run the smallest tests that can break the risky ones first.
From Insight to Bets
Turn solid insights into clear product bets. You'll learn how to write a short opportunity brief, frame falsifiable hypotheses, set success and guardrail metrics.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Rituals
Make discovery a team sport. Set up simple rituals with design, engineering, and stakeholders so learning turns into decisions.
Discovery Governance & KPIs
Put light structure around discovery so teams make better decisions without red tape.
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