How to bring engineers into the product discovery process

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2024-06-24 12:00:05

This essay is featured in March 2024’s issue of the Skiplevel: Tech for Product Managers newsletter. Every month I share a Tech Term You Should Know (TTYSK) and an essay to level up your technical chops and get the most out of dev teams. Subscribe now.

Carl Vellotti is a Sr. Product Manager at GoodRx and creator of Carl’s Newsletter. His mission is to create tactical, helpful, and fun resources that PMs can immediately apply to their day-to-day work and build better products (and also to make the best product memes on the internet). You can find Carl on X / Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

CARL: Think of trying to solve a problem as entering unknown territory. You might have a map with a vague outline of what’s out there, and you might have an idea of what you’re looking for, but the only way to actually discover how to get where you want to go is by actively exploring the space.

That’s basically what “product discovery” is — exploring an unknown space to chart a path to success. Your tools for exploration are user needs, new ideas, prototyping, and iterating as you go.