Discovery kickstarter

The concept of Product Discovery is not new, but few companies these days are doing it, or are doing Discovery in a sufficiently structured way. A common question that I get is if I can help kickstart their Product Discovery process or structure their existing one. That usually starts with training to get the right mindset for Discovery, but often you can apply a plug-and-play process, a so-called playbook, to get things started.

The word playbook is most closely associated with American sports. It’s essentially a book full of plays, or tactics and scenarios, that the coach uses to direct the team during the game. Out on the field there are tactics, but you can never fully plan what’s going to happen. In Product Discovery, you can’t plan all the details up-front because Product Discovery is about learning. You will need to re-adjust the process as you progress. But using a playbook to get started can be useful, especially when tailored for the specific team and context.

For examples of playbooks, see our book about Product Discovery.

Case study: Guiding through the playbook

A Playbook from King

Playbook for the team at King

Case client

King

Background

A team whose mission was to build and maintain a game operations platform for operators and developers in a large gaming company had realised a year back that they needed some developer tools for building applications for that platform. This realisation came through feedback that it was hard to start creating applications, regardless of the knowledge and experience of the developer. The idea for tooling and support for the platform developers to fulfil their needs was born.

Assignment

I was assigned to help out with the second stage of the project, when the team had understood there was a great need for deeper discovery to make sure they built the right thing. Since I was meant to help out over a longer period of time, the playbook I made was just shared briefly as a concept to the team, and then I gave them one part of the map at a time so not to overwhelm them.

Activities

  • Discussions with the team to understand the product and process needs
  • Structuring of a playbook that the team could use after I was gone from the project
  • Using the Holistic Product Discovery Framework as a structure, which was something everyone in the team understood after sufficient training.

Delivery

  • A way-of-working with ideas and problems of all risk-levels, including high risk discovery in the form of a playbook

Client benefit

The employees learned the mindset very well along the way and could change the playbook when needed on their own.