Product Discovery Series (I): How we developed our Product Discovery Framework at Adevinta Spain
At Adevinta Spain, we have been investing for the last years in improving all the processes related to one of the most critical phases in digital product development: the discovery phase, or Product Discovery. In this article, I will explain the reasons behind this strategic investment, the details of what we are doing, and what we have learned throughout this process.
How Do We Work at Adevinta Spain?
For several years now, we have had our own working culture and methodology: PEAK (Prioritization, Empowerment, Alignment, Knowledge). It’s a framework that helps us in our daily decision-making, better organization, and gaining more visibility and autonomy. If you're interested in understanding PEAK better, I recommend watching this talk.
Like many other software development companies, within the PEAK framework, we develop our digital products in the following way:
We work in cross-functional product teams (including product, design, data analysis, and development profiles).
We organize ourselves into teams with a clear mission.
We define goals and track metrics quarterly to meet those goals (OKRs).
We focus on continuously improving both our products and the way we work. Thus, in the product area, we have primarily invested in two major initiatives tied to continuous improvement:
Scrum Revamp: An initiative to improve and standardize how we use the Scrum framework within product teams.
Product Discovery: An initiative aimed at helping product teams better understand what they should develop next to achieve their goals and impact their associated metrics.
In this article, we will focus on explaining the second initiative.
Why Did We Invest in Product Discovery?
At Adevinta, one of our core values is putting users and customers at the center of product development. We are convinced that long-term success comes from building the best product, and we firmly believe the way to achieve that is by focusing on the implicit and explicit needs of our users and customers.
We aim to be as efficient as possible, investing our resources in developing only what our users and customers truly need—without wasting resources. But we recognized that we weren’t always hitting the mark.
A few years ago, we analyzed how we were developing products and identified some key challenges that were holding us back:
Inconsistent processes: Not all teams were approaching the discovery phase in the same way. Teams used different methods and tools, and the level of resources allocated to discovery varied greatly.
Misalignment with user needs: We often found ourselves developing features that weren’t clearly aligned with a user or customer need.
Limited exploration of solutions: Cognitive biases, which we all experience, sometimes led teams to fall in love with the first solution that came to mind, without exploring alternative options.
Focus on features rather than needs: Too often, we focused on delivering features rather than delivering value to users and customers.
To address these challenges, we launched a new initiative with the following goals:
Establish a standardized framework for the discovery phase across all teams.
Ensure more developments are focused on solving real user and customer needs.
Encourage teams to explore multiple possible solutions to a problem or opportunity, rather than sticking with the first idea.
Reduce uncertainty in our development process, so we can be more confident that what we’re building will impact our objectives and associated metrics.
Minimize wasted resources by validating potential solutions before fully developing them, allowing us to discard ideas more quickly and cost-effectively.
Foster innovation and differentiation.
How the Initiative Began: The Dual Track Pilot
We started by forming a cross-functional working group with members from various areas (Product, UX, Agile Coaches) to define how we wanted teams to work during the discovery phase. We spent time learning from industry best practices, assessing our own internal processes, and most importantly, shaping our future model for Product Discovery.
We called this pilot initiative Dual Track, with the goal of helping teams understand that two types of work happen simultaneously:
Discovery Track: Understanding problems and opportunities, defining hypotheses, and reducing uncertainty to ensure we’re delivering value to users and customers.
Delivery Track: Defining, implementing, and validating the impact of solutions that deliver value.
Once we had developed the discovery model, we began training three product teams. These sessions, organized by our UX Research team, included both theoretical and practical components, focusing on the model’s benefits and techniques.
Running the pilot helped us identify many improvements, both in terms of training content and the interaction between UX Research and the teams.
Scaling the Initiative Across Adevinta
At the same time we were wrapping up our pilot in Adevinta Spain, a similar need to improve understanding of Product Discovery was identified across the entire Adevinta group. In response, we began developing a more comprehensive training program, building on the Dual Track pilot’s content and incorporating insights from colleagues throughout Adevinta.
This effort culminated in a Product Discovery course, which I’ll outline below.
Our Product Discovery Course
The training consists of an online, self-paced course, combined with in-person sessions that allow teams to put the theory into practice. These practical sessions enable teams to apply the techniques they’ve learned to real-world challenges their product team is facing at that time. Each session is led by a Discovery Coach, who facilitates and prepares the exercise.
We also track each team’s progress using a maturity assessment template, which measures development in various areas of the discovery phase. Teams complete this template both before starting the course and again six months after completion. This approach allows us to measure the course’s impact on the teams.
Here’s a breakdown of the course:
Module 1: Product Discovery Basics
This module provides an introduction to the key concepts:
What we mean by Product Discovery and its various phases.
The concept of Product Delivery.
What Dual Track means.
How different roles in a multidisciplinary team contribute to the discovery phase.
How we integrate Discovery into our Scrum routines.
Module 2: Alignment and Opportunity Capture
The second module emphasizes the importance of team alignment in performing Product Discovery effectively and how to capture and prioritize opportunities to meet objectives. Some key topics include:
The OKR framework and how it helps teams focus on the right objectives and measure their impact.
What constitutes an opportunity for a product team and how to distinguish it from a solution.
Methods for capturing opportunities from different sources, and the differences between qualitative vs. quantitative research and attitudinal vs. behavioral research.
Opportunity Solutions Tree, a technique popularized by Teresa Torres, which helps map opportunities related to a specific objective. You can learn more about it here.
How to prioritise between different opportunities.
The two practical sessions in this module involve building an Opportunity Solutions Tree and prioritizing opportunities.
Module 3: Exploring Opportunities
This module covers how to explore opportunities in depth to gain the knowledge necessary for creating effective solutions. Topics include:
The Opportunity Canvas, originally described by Jeff Patton in this article, which helps teams map out what they know and don’t know about an opportunity. We’ve built our own Opportunity Canvas at Adevinta based on our own needs.
Selecting the appropriate research techniques based on the questions or uncertainties about an opportunity.
The practical session involves building an Opportunity Canvas for a prioritized opportunity.
Module 4: Ideation and Hypothesis Generation
Once the team has enough information about an opportunity, the next step is ideation. This module covers:
What ideation is (and isn’t) in the context of Product Discovery.
How to structure an ideation workshop for a product team.
Various ideation techniques, like “How Might We,” “The Worst Possible Idea,” and “Heaven and Hell.”
Processes for selecting and prioritizing solutions to validate, such as the ICE framework.
How to define hypotheses for experimentation.
The practical session is an ideation workshop, where teams practice using different techniques to generate solutions for their prioritized opportunity.
Module 5: Validation
The final module focuses on validating assumptions about solutions before fully developing them in the Product Delivery phase. Topics include:
Identifying assumptions and prioritizing which ones to validate.
How to balance between risk and time to market.
How to map assumptions and prioritise which ones to test first.
Validation techniques, such as smoke tests, concept tests, and concierge tests.
Using the Validation Canvas to organize the validation phase.
The practical session involves completing a Validation Canvas to coordinate experiments for validating assumptions about potential solutions.
What We've Achieved, Lessons Learned, and Next Steps
So far, more than 60 product teams and over 700 individuals across Adevinta have completed the course. While we've made significant progress, we still have teams to train and processes to improve. We’ve continuously iterated on the training content, incorporating feedback from participants and introducing new techniques.
The Product Discovery course is not an end in itself. Our goal with this initiative has been to truly impact how teams work in their daily product development activities. We’ve successfully established a set of minimum common practices for how and when teams should engage in Discovery and introduced techniques that are now widely adopted.
Here are some of the key lessons we’ve learned:
Defining a methodological framework for diverse teams with different backgrounds and levels of experience takes time, commitment, and top-level support.
A training program is a product that requires iteration. Launching a pilot and gathering feedback before scaling to the entire organization was critical to our success.
Including a variety of roles in both the definition of the model and the creation of training content enriched the process. While it took longer, it ultimately made it easier for teams to incorporate the learnings.
Practical sessions are key. Learning happens through practice in real-world product development situations. Combining theory with hands-on exercises helped teams integrate the techniques more quickly.
Ongoing support is essential. Guiding the practical sessions and providing follow-up through a Discovery Coach ensured that the training wasn’t seen as a one-off effort, but rather fostered real change in how teams work.
Acknowledgments and Useful Links
To develop our Product Discovery model (and also our course), we drew inspiration from existing articles and models in the industry. Below is a selection of links that inspired us and that I believe may be useful for those looking to dive deeper:
Dual Track Agile by Marty Cagan
Dual Track Development is not Duel Track by Jeff Patton
Introduction to modern Product Discovery by Teresa Torres
Product Discovery, a Practical Guide for Product Teams by Tim Herbig
Opportunity Solutions Tree: Visualize your thinking by Teresa Torres
Opportunity Canvas by Jeff Patton
Design Kit Methods by Ideo.org
Forming Experimental Product Hypotheses by Chris Compston
Idea Validation - Much More Than Just A/B Experiments by Itamar Gilead
The development of the Product Discovery course would have been impossible without the tireless work of Alba, Ari, Austin, Julia, Liz, Simmone, and Tarra.
This post was originally published in spanish on dev.to.