Better Discovery Questions · Product Fluency

Better Discovery Questions · 3 min

Situation

Everyone says they would use it.

You describe a new planning tool and ask five colleagues, “Would this save you time?” Everyone agrees. You still do not know whether anyone has a frequent, costly planning problem.

People can be polite, imagine ideal behavior, or interpret your question differently. Agreement about a hypothetical future is weak evidence of actual demand.

Better question

“Tell me about the last time.”

Ask for a recent example: “When did you last plan the week's staffing? Show me how you did it.” Follow the sequence, tools, interruptions, and handoffs.

Ask how often it happens and what went wrong. Frequency and consequences distinguish a passing annoyance from a problem worth solving.

Go deeper

Inspect the workaround.

“What did you do when the spreadsheet was out of date?” can reveal a phone call, manual correction, or abandoned task.

“What happened because of the delay?” makes importance concrete. A missed customer response is different from mild frustration. Ask to see artifacts when appropriate, while respecting confidentiality.

Failure case

Questions that smuggle in an answer.

“Would automatic reminders solve this?” directs attention to reminders. “Don't you find the current process frustrating?” suggests the emotion you want to hear.

Try “Which part required the most effort?” and “What have you tried to change?” Leave room for the answer that the current process is good enough.

PM decision

Separate evidence from interpretation.

Record the observed behavior, the participant's explanation, and your inference separately. “Used three spreadsheets” is an observation. “Needs a single dashboard” is a solution hypothesis.

Seek contrasting cases: people who succeed, people who struggle, and people who no longer use the product. Five enthusiastic interviews do not establish how common a need is.

Remember this

Ask questions that could disprove your idea.

Good discovery creates room for inconvenient answers. Leave knowing what happened, how often, what it cost, and how the person handles it today.