Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value

In Continuous Discovery Habits, Teresa Torres traces the evolution of product development practices. In the early days of software development, particularly before the rise of Internet technology, product decisions were primarily made through annual budget cycles that business executives controlled. These executives would assign fixed-timeline projects to engineering teams with predetermined specifications, often with little to no input from actual users.

This traditional approach frequently resulted in what the industry came to know as “waterfall” development—a linear, sequential process where requirements were set in stone at the beginning, followed by lengthy development cycles. The consequences were predictable yet persistent: delayed projects, exceeded budgets, and, most critically, products that failed to resonate with their intended users. The disconnect between decision-makers and end-users was structural, built into the very process of how products were conceived and developed.

A significant shift occurred in 2001 with the creation of the Agile Manifesto, which introduced principles emphasizing adaptability, customer collaboration, and iterative development. This marked the beginning of a fundamental change in how software was developed, though the transformation of product development practices lagged. While engineering teams adopted agile methodologies for building products, the decision-making process about what to build often remained rooted in older, less flexible approaches.