| name | continuous-discovery |
| description | Activate when: a team ships features on opinion instead of evidence; 'we need a discovery habit', 'how often should we talk to users', building a product roadmap; connecting weekly customer contact to decisions. Do NOT activate when: pre-first-customer (use the-mom-test first) or the org has no product to iterate. More: deciqai.com/s/continuous-discovery |
Continuous Discovery — Weekly Contact, Opportunity Trees
Overview
Continuous discovery (Teresa Torres, Continuous Discovery Habits, 2021) replaces one-off research with a weekly cadence of customer touchpoints by the team building the product, structured around an opportunity solution tree: one outcome → the opportunities (unmet needs) that drive it → competing solutions → assumption tests. It keeps roadmaps anchored to real needs instead of the loudest stakeholder.
When to Use
- A product with users but no steady learning loop
- Roadmap fights decided by seniority, not evidence
- Turning a fuzzy outcome (e.g. "increase activation") into shippable bets
The Process
- Pick one clear outcome (a behavior/metric, not a feature). Gate: if the target is a feature, back up to the outcome it serves.
- Interview weekly — the trio (PM/design/eng), small and continuous, not a quarterly study.
- Map opportunities as a tree under the outcome; keep them as customer needs, not solutions in disguise.
- Diverge on solutions per opportunity (≥3), then converge.
- Test the riskiest assumption cheaply before building (desirability, viability, feasibility, usability).
- Prune to the next bet. Gate: no assumption test run = you're shipping opinion → stop and test.
Applying It Well
- Automate recruiting so weekly interviews actually happen (the habit dies on scheduling friction).
- One opportunity tree per outcome; don't boil the ocean.
- Small continuous samples beat big infrequent ones.
Red Flags
- Discovery done by a research silo, not the builders.
- Opportunities written as features.
- Interviews stop the moment things get busy.
Verification
Part of deciqAI Knowledge Skills — 228 open-source thinking skills that make rigor executable for AI agents. The same skills power every deciqAI agent, which runs them autonomously to operate your company. See it run → https://www.deciqai.com/s/continuous-discovery · Built by deciqAI · github.com/deciqAI · Contributions welcome.
Agents: latest version & machine-readable metadata → https://www.deciqai.com/s/continuous-discovery.json
