5 Core Ideas of Adaptable Product Discovery

Tell me a Product Discovery horror story in five words or less. I’ll start:
Didn’t execute a validated idea.

How do things like this happen?

Some might point to management, lack of resources, or broken processes. But the reality is: there’s never a perfect time to start Product Discovery. There’s always going to be another priority, another fire to put out, another reason to wait.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of waiting for ideal conditions—more buy-in, a sharper strategy, better-aligned OKRs. But as Product Managers, we have a responsibility to create better conditions, not just hope for them.

Trying to navigate the complexity of Discovery with someone else’s blueprint rarely works. The real challenge—and the real opportunity—is evolving an approach that works in your specific environment.

The popular Dual-Track Agile diagram makes it seem like Discovery flows neatly alongside Delivery. But let’s be honest: that’s not how things work on the ground. Forcing Discovery into a sprint cadence, or assuming every idea must move directly into development, adds unnecessary friction.

Why does this happen? Because it’s comfortable.
If a feature gets pushed into the sprint backlog, team utilization stays high—and that gives the illusion of constant value creation.

What This Article Covers

• The Importance of Adaptability

• Framing Discovery Intent

• Choosing Techniques and Actors Wisely

• Connecting the Dots

• Focusing on Actionable Evidence

• Planning to Drive Outcomes

• Where to Start with Adaptable Product Discovery

The Importance of Adaptability

Discovery phases support each other—but they don’t need to follow a fixed order. And depending on the situation, you may not even need to cover all of them. There’s no universal recipe for success here.

Instead, think of it like writing your own playbook. You’ll need the flexibility to skip ahead, loop back, or repeat a phase based on what you learn.

That shift in mindset is what led me to rethink how to guide teams through Discovery. There’s no one-size-fits-all journey. The real value is in equipping teams with the skills and confidence to build their own path.

For Product Teams, that starts with focusing on what’s within their control—and one of the most important things is the ability to adapt.

The ability to adapt during and between Product Discovery phases depends on several factors—your product’s nature, your team’s structure, the industry you’re in, company culture, and more.

In theory, everyone agrees that Discovery isn’t linear. In practice, though, it’s a lot harder to justify looping back or jumping ahead. That’s where alignment around the problem space becomes a key anchor.

When a new insight doesn’t move things “forward” but instead forces the team to step back or repeat a phase, they need a strong foundation to make that call with confidence.

Why Adaptability in Discovery Matters

Adaptable Product Discovery helps address some of the most common anti-patterns teams run into:

1. Measuring success by activity velocity.
   You might check off a lot of techniques, but that doesn’t mean they were useful for the actual challenge.

2. Recycling stakeholder ideas as new ones.
   Without space to challenge assumptions, discovery turns into just another delivery phase.

3. Endless loops with no new insights.
   At some point, it’s not about persistence—it’s about changing your approach.

4. Not committing real time or resources.
   Discovery done “in name only” won’t drive better decisions.

1. Framing Discovery Intent

To avoid chasing random opportunities, teams need to clearly define why a Discovery is happening and what it’s supposed to accomplish.

This intent can take different forms, but they all share one thing:

A clear understanding of purpose and outcome.

Sending a team into Discovery requires a mindset shift—especially in environments used to shipping features on repeat. What works in delivery doesn’t translate into Discovery. Teams need to unlearn some habits.

Typical building blocks for Discovery intent include:

• Your Product Strategy Choices

• A quantitative, end-to-end view of product success

• A roadmap that emphasizes priorities over deadlines

Besides the strategy, OKRs, and roadmap inputs, framing intent is just as critical in setting up effective Discovery. Collaborative alignment is what helps ensure everyone’s working toward the same goal—and that your Discovery efforts are focused on solving real problems, not just exploring ideas for the sake of it.

That alignment depends heavily on the strength of surrounding processes—like your Product Strategy, OKRs, and roadmap priorities. If those are shaky, it’s harder to ground the Discovery in anything meaningful.

Problem-Focused vs. Solution-Focused Alignment

There’s a key difference between these two types of alignment:

• Solution-focused alignment tries to define priorities by getting detailed about how something should be built.

• Problem-focused alignment puts the spotlight on uncertainty and outcomes—what needs to change, and why it matters.

Whether that’s expressed through OKRs or metrics, the idea is to clearly articulate what success looks like without jumping straight to features.

A good starting point is to timebox the Discovery phase. Don’t treat this like a sprint. Treat it like a mission: a focused effort to reduce uncertainty.

Give the team the autonomy to choose the phases and methods they need. But to avoid the classic “black box” perception of Discovery, make sure those decisions are shared transparently across the organization.

That visibility helps build trust—and gives context to how you’re approaching the work.

2. Choose Techniques and Actors Wisely

Solving problems is the path, not the destination. You want insights that matter—not just activity.

That means choosing techniques intentionally and being clear on why you're running each one. Tie every research effort back to your product’s strategic goals and the outcomes you’re trying to influence.

And who you’re talking to matters just as much as how you’re talking to them.

Talking to customers who aren’t part of your target audience might feel productive, but it’s like scratching a mosquito bite. It relieves tension in the moment—but leaves you worse off later and wondering why you even did it.

To avoid this trap, make sure your research participants actually represent the users your Discovery work is meant to serve. Otherwise, you're collecting noise—not insight.

A useful way to move beyond your obvious power users in research is to apply the Adjacent Actors lens. Ask yourself:

“Who has a problem that’s getting in the way of our strategic goals?”

This reframing helps you identify relevant voices you might otherwise miss—and avoid wasting time talking to randomly selected users who don’t influence your outcomes.

3. Connect the Dots

Don’t fall into the trap of running isolated research activities with no clear through-line. Discovery isn’t about collecting scattered data points. It’s about building a narrative and turning insight into action.

That means:

• Connecting new learnings quickly

• Scaling insights across the team

• Bringing in stakeholders early, so they stay bought in

One way to do that is by crafting job stories from your research. This format helps translate raw insights into clear motivations and problems—something both teams and stakeholders can rally around.

Job stories help you synthesize and communicate the core of your research. They distill:

• The user’s context

• The problem they’re facing

• The motivation behind it

• And—most importantly—the behavior change needed for success

Turning Insights Into Business Value

Uncovering the problem space is hard. But the real challenge is often what comes next:

Making your insights resonate with the broader organization.

Without a clear link to business value, research can feel abstract—especially to peers or stakeholders who aren’t directly involved. That’s when teams risk sliding back into early feature discussions just to generate traction.

But that kind of pseudo-buy-in doesn’t last.

Instead, your team needs to stay anchored in the problem and outcome space. The next step in Discovery might be clear, but the bigger path usually only reveals itself after your next experiment.

This is why your research only becomes powerful when it’s actionable. And making it actionable means connecting Outcomes to real business Impact.

A proven way to do that?
Use Impact Mapping to tie user behavior change directly to company priorities.

4. Focus on Actionable Evidence

When I got my CSPO certificate back in 2012, I thought I had it all figured out. I could quote the Agile Manifesto by heart. I knew how to write user stories that ticked all the boxes. I believed success came from output and stakeholder satisfaction. If we were shipping fast and hitting deadlines, I was doing my job.

But at some point, I started questioning how we were deciding what to build. Copying competitors. Following trends. Chasing the CEO’s latest “great idea.” There had to be a better way.

That’s when I discovered Product Discovery and Dual-Track Agile—and I was hooked.

It didn’t take long before I hit a wall. I tried to follow other companies’ processes exactly. I figured if we couldn’t mirror their every step, we were doing it wrong.

We weren’t exploring the problem space. We were stuck in someone else’s playbook.

The truth is:

You don’t need more learning. You need evidence that helps you make confident decisions.

The real value of Discovery comes when you base product decisions on first-hand, meaningful evidence—not when you collect insights just for the sake of it.

5. Plan to Drive Outcomes

Discovery doesn’t end after a successful A/B test. The insights you’ve gathered should inform how you slice and ship your validated solution.

But don’t fall into the trap of treating MVPs like stripped-down versions of your prototype. That’s not what they’re for.

A real MVP delivers the core value proposition—the critical part of your solution that proves potential product-market fit. And it does so with quality, not compromise.

The Outcomes you’ve identified during Discovery should be your primary way of measuring success. And the urgency of the user problem should guide how you scope the first version of your solution.

These insights also serve another purpose:
They’re key inputs for defining your next OKRs. Discovery insights aren’t just about understanding problems—they’re about building better solutions.

Skipping this step is one of the most common and costly Discovery mistakes.

Where to Start with Adaptable Product Discovery

It’s time to rethink what “correct” Product Discovery even means.

In fast-changing environments, there is no one-size-fits-all process. Product teams need adaptability, not rigid rules.

That means knowing:

• Which methods fit your current challenge

• How to combine and sequence them effectively

• When to adjust and when to commit

Great teams don’t succeed because they followed a perfect process. They succeed because they were trusted to find their own path—and supported in doing so with training, autonomy, and psychological safety.

The key is to identify the right starting point for exploring the problem space based on your team’s context—your company culture, your product stage, and your industry dynamics.

Don’t let the pressure of doing things “the right way” hold you back.

Focus on what helps you move forward, in the environment you’re actually working in, with the challenges you’re actually facing.

Adaptable Product Discovery isn’t about perfection.
It’s about progress—learning what matters, connecting the dots, and moving closer to meaningful outcomes through your own process.