Discovery Habits Advisor skill

Discovery Habits Advisor

Purpose

Turn customer contact from an event into a habit: a rhythm of small, regular conversations whose evidence reaches the decisions the team is making that week.

Teams usually know they should talk to customers. They don't, because discovery lives in projects (with a start, an end, and a deck), and projects get squeezed by delivery pressure. A habit fits inside normal work: a few conversations a week, notes in one place, one visible question the evidence is aimed at.

The sentence to keep in your head: the point of a habit is not more customer contact, it's shorter distance between what customers say and what the team decides.

Input

Works best with: Your team (who is on it), how you talk to customers today, and what gets in the way.

Also useful: Who you can reach and how (direct, through partners, through support), the length of your sales cycle, what decisions are coming up, and where evidence currently goes.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself (text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line) counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill starts by asking how customer contact works today and what's in the way, then recommends the smallest rhythm that would work. It sizes the habit to your team, never defaults to the heaviest, and lets you move it either way.

Example invocations:

• Team of 4. We run a discovery sprint once a year. Want something continuous.
• We only reach plant engineers through partners. What cadence can we keep?

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Key Concepts

The Dial: Right-Size the Habit

Not every team can do the same rhythm. Pick a level, say why in one line, and let the user move it:

	Level 1: Light	Level 2: Standard	Level 3: Full
Rhythm	One conversation every two weeks	One or two a week, same slot	Weekly touchpoints with a rotating team
Who	The PM	PM + one designer or engineer	The product trio, rotating guests
Evidence	One shared notes page	Notes plus a weekly one-line "what we learned"	Notes, a living opportunity tree, review in planning
Fits	Small team, long cycles, limited access	Most teams	Teams with access and a high-uncertainty roadmap

Level 2 is the default. Never default to Level 3. A heavy cadence a small team can't keep teaches the team that discovery is a thing they fail at. If they go lighter, name what it leaves uncovered (for Level 1: fewer conversations means slower pattern detection, and fewer people hearing customers directly).

Find the Real Blocker

Four blockers look identical ("we don't have time") and need different fixes:

Blocker	What it sounds like	The fix
Access	"We can't reach customers"	Create a standing channel: customer advisory panel, support-ride-alongs, partner introductions, a recruiting pool kept warm
Time	"We're always in delivery"	Fixed slot, tiny scope, shared by two people; trade a status meeting for it
Ownership	"Everyone assumes someone else does it"	Name one owner for scheduling and one for the notes
Consequence	"We talk but nothing changes"	Tie each conversation to a named upcoming decision; review evidence in the meeting where the decision is made

Most teams that "can't find time" actually have a consequence problem: conversations that change nothing feel optional.

Aim Every Conversation at a Decision

A standing slot with no question becomes small talk. Keep one visible question the team is trying to answer this month, tied to a decision on the calendar ("whether to fund the bracket kit in March"). Conversations then gather evidence for something, and the evidence has somewhere to go.

Access in Long Cycles and Through Partners

Where customers are hard to reach, don't pretend a weekly slot will work. Use whatever contact exists: post-sale (commissioning, support calls), partners (ride-alongs, partner calls), and trade-show or site visits as clusters of conversations. Set the habit around the capture and review rhythm even when the conversations come in bursts: a weekly 20-minute evidence review keeps the habit alive between visits.

Capture Evidence Where the Team Will See It

One shared place, simple notes, each with who, when, and what was said in their words. Keep observation separate from interpretation (see research-synthesis). A weekly one-line "what we learned" posted where the team already looks (the planning doc, the channel) does more than a perfect repository nobody opens.

Share the Hearing

Evidence heard directly changes minds in a way a summary doesn't. Rotate engineers, designers, or partner managers into conversations. When one person does all the listening, everyone else has a second-hand version and argues from opinion.

Facilitation Source of Truth

Use workshop-facilitation as the interaction protocol: heads-up, one question per turn, numbered options, and best-guess mode on request.

Default entry mode: Guided · set in pm-skills.config.yaml (library-wide default or a per-skill override); the user's own choice in the session always wins. On the first turn, offer all three modes, then open in the default without waiting for a pick: Guided asks the first question, Context dump invites the paste, Best guess asks for a one-sentence minimum and drafts with every assumption labeled.

Anti-Patterns (what this is NOT)

• Not a research method. It sets the rhythm; interviewing and synthesis live in other skills.
• Not a mandate for weekly interviews. Level 1 is a legitimate answer.
• Not a tooling recommendation. A shared page is enough.

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Application

This skill asks up to 4 adaptive questions, then recommends a rhythm.

Question 1 of 4: How does customer contact work today?

Agent asks:

"How do you hear from customers right now?

1. Occasional projects (a research sprint, a round of interviews, then quiet)
2. Indirectly (support, sales, partners relay it)
3. Regularly, but nothing changes (we talk, then deliver as planned)
4. Hardly at all"

Listen for the blocker underneath. 1 → likely time or ownership. 2 → access, plus second-hand evidence. 3 → consequence. 4 → access or fear.

Question 2 of 4: What's actually in the way?

Agent asks:

"What's the main reason it isn't steadier?

1. We can't easily reach customers (access)
2. We're always in delivery (time)
3. Nobody owns it (ownership)
4. We do it, but it doesn't change what we build (consequence)"

Confirm the diagnosis. If they pick time, ask whether the conversations are tied to a decision; the real blocker is often consequence.

Question 3 of 4: Who can do this, and how many customers can you reach?

Agent asks:

"Who on the team could take part, and roughly how many customer contacts could you arrange in a month?"

Size the level: one person and a handful of contacts → Level 1. A PM plus a partner and a steady pool → Level 2. A full trio with access and a high-uncertainty roadmap → Level 3. Recommend one, say why, and invite an override either way.

Question 4 of 4: What decision is coming up?

Agent asks:

"What's the next real decision this evidence could change?"

Tie the habit to it. That decision becomes the visible question for the month and the meeting where evidence is reviewed.

Final Step: Recommend the habit

## Your Discovery Habit: [team / context]

**Level:** [1 Light / 2 Standard / 3 Full], because [one line]. A lighter level would leave
[what it leaves uncovered].
**The real blocker:** [access / time / ownership / consequence] and the fix.

### The rhythm
- **Conversations:** [how many, when, who joins]
- **Where evidence goes:** [one place, who writes the notes]
- **The visible question this month:** [tied to the decision]
- **Weekly review:** [20 minutes, what gets said, who hears it]

### How evidence reaches the decision
[Which meeting, what the evidence changes]

### Start this week
1. [one action, small]
2. [one action]

### Skills to pair
[`discovery-interview-prep`](../discovery-interview-prep/SKILL.md), [`research-synthesis`](../research-synthesis/SKILL.md), [`opportunity-solution-tree`](../opportunity-solution-tree/SKILL.md)

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Examples

Example A: SaaS, a small team with consequence trouble

User: "Team of 4 at Fieldlight. We run a research sprint every spring, then go quiet. We talk to customers sometimes but roadmap decisions don't change."

Agent (Q1): → 3 (regularly, nothing changes). (Q2): → 4 (consequence). Agent (Q3): "Two of you could join, and CS can arrange about six contacts a month." → Level 2.

Recommendation: Level 2, because you have two people and a steady pool. Blocker: consequence. Fix: tie every conversation to a roadmap decision. This month's question: "Does the route-rebuild pain justify the optimizer in Q3 planning?" Two conversations a week, PM plus an engineer rotating in; notes in one doc; a one-line "what we learned" in the Monday planning thread; evidence reviewed in the planning meeting where the decision is made. A lighter level would mean the engineer never hears a customer, so arguments stay second-hand.

Example B: Industrial, access through partners

User: "We sell controllers through 8 partners and only reach plant engineers through them. Sales cycle is 8 months. A weekly slot won't work."

Agent (Q1): → 2 (indirectly). (Q2): → 1 (access). Agent (Q3): "The PM and one application engineer; maybe 6-8 contacts a month, in clusters."

Recommendation: Level 1 with a captured rhythm, because contacts come in bursts. Use commissioning visits and partner ride-alongs as the source (clusters of conversations), keep a warm pool of five plant engineers who've agreed to a call, and run a weekly 20-minute evidence review even in quiet weeks. Visible question: "Is downtime or program risk the bigger barrier?" tied to the tooling decision in March. A lighter level would leave you with second-hand partner reports, so ask partners to bring an engineer to one call a month.

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Common Pitfalls

Pitfall 1: Discovery as a Project

Symptom: A sprint, a deck, then silence. Consequence: Evidence goes stale and the team returns to opinion. Fix: A small standing slot that survives delivery pressure.

Pitfall 2: A Rhythm Nobody Can Keep

Symptom: Weekly interviews planned by a team of three with no access. Consequence: Two weeks in, it's abandoned and discovery feels like failure. Fix: Size the level to the team. Level 1 kept beats Level 3 dropped.

Pitfall 3: No Decision Attached

Symptom: Conversations with no question and no meeting where evidence is used. Consequence: Nothing changes, so the habit feels optional. Fix: Name the decision, and review evidence in the meeting where it's made.

Pitfall 4: One Listener

Symptom: The PM hears customers and reports back. Consequence: Everyone else argues from a summary. Fix: Rotate others into conversations.

Pitfall 5: A Repository Nobody Opens

Symptom: Elaborate tooling, empty habit. Consequence: Evidence exists and nobody sees it. Fix: One shared page and a weekly one-liner where the team already looks.

Pitfall 6: Ignoring Long Cycles and Gated Access

Symptom: Advice copied from fast consumer software. Consequence: A cadence that can't work for your customers. Fix: Use clusters of contact (visits, commissioning) and keep the review rhythm weekly.

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References

Related Skills

• discovery-interview-prep: run the conversations
• discovery-process: the full process
• research-synthesis: make sense of what you hear
• opportunity-solution-tree: where the evidence accumulates
• survey-design-advisor: size what you found
• workshop-facilitation: interaction protocol

External Frameworks

• Continuous discovery habits: Teresa Torres, Continuous Discovery Habits (2021), the weekly touchpoints and product trio.

Provenance

Distilled from practitioner experience helping product teams build sustainable customer-contact routines.