Template

Product discovery review template

The team shows what it learned from customers this cycle — interviews, tests, numbers — and decides which ideas are worth building, which need more evidence, and which to drop.

60 minutesFor Product managers, designers, engineering leads and a decision-makerAgenda room
Change the agenda first

The agenda, with a time for each part

  1. The question we set out to answer5 min
    • What did we want to find out, and why did it matter?
  2. What we did10 min
    • Who did we talk to or test with, and how many?
  3. What we learned20 min
    • What surprised us?
    • What did customers do, as opposed to what they said?
  4. What it means for the idea15 min
    • Build it, test it more, or drop it — and what would change our mind?
  5. Next cycle10 min
    • What is the next riskiest thing we do not know?

How the notes read afterwards

A made-up example, so you can see the shape. In a real call each line carries the words that were said and who said them.

Question. Will small clinics pay for automatic appointment reminders?

Did. 12 interviews and a fake “turn on reminders” button shown to 400 clinics.

Learned. 9% clicked; most interviewees already send reminders by hand and hate it.

Decision. Build a simple version. Next question: will they pay $20 a month for it?

Running it well

Ways to change it

WeeklyTwenty minutes: one thing learned this week and one decision.
With leadershipQuarterly, one slide per idea: the question, the evidence and the recommendation.

When to skip it. When the team is building something already decided and nothing new has been learned; hold it after the next round of customer conversations.

Questions

What is product discovery?

The work of finding out what to build before building it: talking to customers, testing ideas cheaply and checking whether people will use and pay for something.

What happens in a discovery review?

The team shares what it learned, connects it to the assumptions behind an idea, and decides whether to build, test further or stop.

How is discovery different from delivery?

Discovery decides whether something is worth building; delivery builds it well. Most teams do both at once on different ideas.

What happens in the room

Everybody joins from the link, with no account. The agenda sits beside the call and each item fills in with what was said about it, under the name of the person who said it.

More templates

Design critiqueA designer shows work in progress and the group says, against the goal, what works and what does not — so the design gets better before anyone builds it.Feature kickoffBefore work starts on a feature: everyone who will build, test, launch and support it hears why it matters, what done looks like, and what is deliberately left out.Launch planning meetingA few weeks before a launch: who hears about it, in what order, through which channels, what each team must have ready, and the one date everyone works back from.Beta feedback sessionA conversation with a customer using something before it is finished: what they used it for, where they got stuck, what they would miss if it went away.Product councilThe leaders of product, engineering, design and the business decide together what gets built next and what stops, so teams are not pulled in different directions.Project kickoffWhy the project exists, what done means, and who owns what — agreed on day one.Sprint retrospectiveWhat went well, what did not, and the one or two changes you will actually make.Sprint planningOne goal for the sprint, the work that serves it, and who takes what.

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