When is Product Discovery a waste of time?

Is it just me or most of the Product Discovery efforts are a waste of time? They’re great in principle but in practice, don’t feel very agile when it comes to predicting what will users like. Let me explain:

Let me just say, I’m not an enemy or hater of Product Discovery. I’m actually a big fan!

When used right and with common sense, discovery will allow you a literally create a very cheap MVP that will allow you to successfully prove (or disprove) your product hypothesis and thus save a lot of development budget.

That being said…

I feel that Discovery can turn into something that becomes a mandatory “process extender” just for the sake of following the Product Discovery trend. Thus, it all starts to resemble walking in circles and second-guessing oneself as a Product Manager for WAY too long.

This is not agile, this isn’t effective.

Maybe Mark Zuckerberg’s motto “Move Fast and Break Things” is taking it it step too far in 2024, but “Released is better than perfect” should be something at the back of your Product head all the time!

So, when is Discovery helpful, and when is it an overkill? Let me give you my personal list, but I hope to hear back from you, dear reader, in the comments if you agree with my points and…