Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres
Summary
In Continuous Discovery, Teresa Torres offers a deeply customer-centric framework for product discovery, grounded in the belief that successful products are born from an ongoing, structured dialogue with users. It’s not so much Know thyself as Know thy Customer. The book combines agile principles and behavioural insights into a repeatable process for identifying and testing assumptions and generating ideas that create both customer and business value.
Central to her approach is the concept of the “product trio”-product manager, designer, and engineer, all of whom collaborate with the customer to fully understand their requirements.
Key Insights
Focus relentlessly on customer needs, desires, and pinch points — not competitors.
Outcomes (changes in customer behaviour) matter more than outputs (features shipped).
Discovery is deciding what to build; delivery is building and shipping.
Work in a cross-functional “product trio” to avoid silos and make collaborative decisions.
Use weekly customer conversations, open-ended questions, and interview snapshots to capture insights.
Visualise problems and opportunities — diagrams make thinking concrete.
Beware cognitive traps: confirmation bias, overconfidence, escalation of commitment, and groupthink.
Differentiate between one-way door decisions (hard to reverse) and two-way door decisions (easier to reverse).
Use opportunity solution trees to connect customer needs with possible solutions.
Generate many ideas — creativity comes from quantity and iteration.
Structure brainstorming to avoid social loafing and conformity: ideate individually, then refine as a group.
Test assumptions across desirability, viability, feasibility, usability, and ethics.
Strengths
Passionate, principled, and clearly rooted in real-world experience.
Combines theory and practice in a way that is both actionable and inspiring.
Offers practical tools (e.g., opportunity solution trees, interview snapshots) that teams can adopt immediately.
Deeply aligned with agile values but without jargon overload.
Excellent at distinguishing between customer value and business value.
Weaknesses
Heavy emphasis on customer interviews may not fit all business contexts (e.g., products with long sales cycles or regulatory constraints).
Some concepts, while valuable, assume a level of organisational maturity that early-stage teams may lack.
Reflections
Unlike some business books that feel “manufactured” to meet market demand, Continuous Discovery Habits reads as a genuine, passionate call to action. Torres believes deeply in what she writes, and her commitment to customer-first product discovery shines through every chapter. Her arguments are persuasive and practical, grounded in her extensive coaching experience. While certain aspects (such as the intensity of customer interaction) might be challenging for all teams to implement, the core message, that discovery is a continuous process, not a one-off event, is an important reminder.
Conclusion
Continuous Discovery Habits is one of those rare business books that feels as though the author couldn’t not write it. Torres delivers an actionable guide to weaving discovery into the daily fabric of work. Some sections strike me as a little overprescriptive, but the core message is powerful and simple: don’t assume you know what customers want, go and find out, and use disciplined interview techniques to do so.
Book Details
Title: Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value
Author: Teresa Torres
Publication Year: 2021
Genre: Decision Making
Reference: APA-04, 57
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