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I've worked on many products where many teams ship most features that make their products worse.The problem here is we get caught in these build loops or traps because we're not following a process to help us first identify what our customers really need. Let's talk about how to solve this problem.To find product market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course - https://nxtstep.io/fitEpisode TranscriptHey, folks, sean here.And today what I want to talk to you aboutis how to know which feature to design and buildnext into your product that's going to offer maximum valuefor both your customer and your organization.Far too often I work with clients thatultimately get caught in what's commonly referred toas the build trap, which means that you'recontinuously building and shipping features without a wholelot of understanding in terms of why.Oftentimes this can be referred toas well as feature factories.Your product development organization just kind of becomes afeature factory in that you're just constantly building andshipping things without a whole lot of understanding interms of the impact that ultimately that's going tohave on your product and its experience.Now, the problem here is if you don't knowwhy you're building those features in particular, and that'snot commonly understood by your entire product development team,then ultimately you are more likely to make yourproduct experience worse rather than better.And I often see this being a part ofthe problem in terms of not really knowing whichprocess to follow instead, as it just kind offeels like you should be doing something.And oftentimes the incentives for product development teamsare misaligned with making the product experience betterand adding more value for your customers, whichmakes this problem worse as well as andyou may be being held accountable for ultimatelybuilding and shipping more features, which isn't necessarilythe objective here.In fact, that, like I said before, canactually make the whole product experience worse.So if you're building, I want to talk toyou about why this can make it worse.If you're building and shipping features for which you don'thave great direction in terms of the impact that's goingto have and how that's going to make the productexperience better, then more than likely your customers and yourusers aren't going to need it.And if your customer users don't need it, then whenthey see that feature in your product and they don'tuse it, it's going to continue to make the productexperience more confusing for them, more clumsy for them.That's why I say itmakes your product experience worse.It's because it's not a need that they have.And you building those features is notgrounded in anything that is particularly relevantto solving problems for your customers.So I want to talk to you now that youhave a better understanding from that perspective in terms ofthat trap and why people fall into it.If any of this sounds common to you in terms ofyou've been there before, I want to talk to you aboutthe approach we should be taking instead to ensure that wedon't fall into one of these common traps.So what I've shared so far might soundgreat, but your next most pressing question mightbe, okay, well, what do we do instead?How do we know if we're shipping afeature or we're going to ultimately build afeature or what we should prioritize that's goingto make the product experience better, not worse.And that comes from discovery,discovery and also research.If it's on the earlier stage side ofyour product or we're interacting with someone who'snew to your product, I refer to asdiscovery that's conversations essentially with prospects who don'thave prior experience with your product.And if it's on the later stage side, Irefer to that as research in terms of acustomer or user that you may already have.Now, I want to talk to you aboutthe objectives when having conversations with each.But I'm going to use a framework that I callBuckets and Marbles in terms of figuring out essentially fromthe opportunities that we identify from investing in the researchand the discovery, how do we know which one topick and how do we continuously prioritize as more ofthose opportunities are coming available.So from the discovery perspective, that helps youtrack your market to making sure that youhave a better understanding of not just wherethe market is, but where it's going.And if you're talking to prospects that arehaving only a very little, if none experienceat all with your product, they will betelling you what is most important for them.So if you are gathering this information and you'retracking this information, you'll have an idea and youcould create sort of like a trend line interms of where it's going, which features are mostpopular that they're requesting, which problems are the mostcommon ones that they're experiencing.You'll be able to track that.Now, on the other side, for your existing customersand users, if you're interacting with them, what you'retrying to do is you're trying to figure outhow to make your product better.So theoretically here your productis already offering the value.That's why they're using it.But in order for them to continue touse it, it may need you to prioritizecontinuing to make that experience better because theirneeds are likely to change over time, right?The product and the market and productmarket fit are both dynamic concepts.I'm talking about tracking the market so that ultimatelywe can continue to upgrade and improve your product.So that's where that's the process youneed to connect to product development andthat's where all of this should begin.That's the catalyst for everything that getsinvested in the product development process.And if you're not investing in either one or bothof those, you need to stop what you're doing now.Especially stop writing code.Because like I said before, you'relikely making the product experience better.And instead, invest in both of theseopportunities to perform discovery and research tofind a source of those problems andopportunities worth building into your product experience.Now, the last question I want to talkabout today is once you have identified anumber of those problems from prospects, from customers,how do you prioritize them for development?Well, that's where this framework that Ideveloped called Buckets and Marbles comes from.Essentially when I'm having these interviews, what I do isI create a bucket every time I've heard about aunique instance of a problem that a prospect or acustomer or an existing user has or needs solved.Every time I hear about something unique, Icreate a new bucket to store ultimately futureinstances of me hearing about that same problem.So, if the first prospect I speak with mentions twoproble...