Phase 1 of 12 · Product Operator
Discovery & Evidence
Phase 1 is the work of turning raw ideas and customer signals into evidence and disconfirming tests, where humans validate demand AI cannot.
Turn raw ideas and customer signals into evidence, assumptions, and disconfirming tests.
Decision rules
Each rule connects a real situation to the skill or playbook that fits it. Linked terms open canonical sources.
| Situation | Missing skill | Recommended playbook | Alternatives | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A founder has a raw startup idea that hasn't been challenged out loud yet. | Forcing questions | gstack office-hours | grill-me | Office-hours produces a structured critique from a panel; grill-me is faster and rougher when you just need the first round of pushback. |
| A discovery plan exists but the riskiest assumptions behind it haven't been named. | Assumption mapping | pm-product-discovery:identify-assumptions-new | pre-mortem | Assumption mapping forces you to label value, usability, viability, feasibility, and GTM risks separately; pre-mortem only catches what people can imagine going wrong. |
| Customer discovery interviews keep wandering off-topic and producing incomparable notes. | Interview structure | pm-product-discovery:interview-script | Dovetail template | A script gives you comparable data across interviews; Dovetail is the right tool once you have transcripts to analyse rather than questions to ask. |
| A founder needs their thinking pressure-tested before any docs or plans exist. | Plan stress test | grill-me | gstack office-hours | Grill-me works on raw ideas in conversation; office-hours expects an artifact, so use it once language and scope are written down. |
Watch
Reality
AI helps synthesise research and challenge assumptions, but it cannot validate demand. The work stays grounded in users, observed behaviour, and explicit assumptions.
Required skills
- Assumption identification
- Customer interviewing
- Evidence synthesis
- Hypothesis prioritisation
- Experiment design
Failure modes
- Hallucinated demand
- Synthetic certainty
- Average-case product thinking
Next operating step
Before writing a PRD or building a prototype, capture the assumptions, customer evidence, disconfirming tests, and the decision threshold for continuing.
Working through Discovery & Evidence?
I advise teams on this part of the lifecycle. Get in touch → if you want a direct, vendor-free conversation about what's worth doing next.