Product discovery checklist: Aligning products with users

Product teams often face the misconception that their primary role is to create features rather than focusing on what customers truly need, leading to misaligned priorities driven by external demands. Product discovery is emphasized as a crucial process to counteract this by centering the customer's needs, thereby avoiding costly mistakes and ensuring product alignment with user demands. This approach involves forming a "product trio" to explore ideas from diverse perspectives, maintaining alignment with business stakeholders, and iterating continuously to refine product ideas and solutions. Key elements of effective product discovery include sharing progress and insights to build trust and credibility, ideating collaboratively, exploring multiple solutions, testing assumptions through experiments, and maintaining a cycle of learning and adaptation. By fostering collaboration and curiosity, product discovery helps teams create valuable products while minimizing the risk of developing features that lack user interest or value.