September 3, 2025 • 10 mins
From waterfall to agile — and now to continuous discovery.
In this episode of the Better Business Analyst Podcast, we explore the next big shift in how Business Analysts create value. Continuous discovery means staying connected to users, stakeholders, and data throughout the delivery cycle — not just at the start.
You’ll learn:
Why traditional discovery isn’t enough anymore
Practical steps to embed continuous discovery in your BA work
Real-world examples of how discovery-as-a-habit prevents wasted effort and increases business value
This isn’t about doing more work — it’s about doing smarter work.
🎙️ Better conversations. Better decisions. Better Business Analysis.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
How often have you delivered on all the requirements only to
discover the solution still doesn't hit the mark?
That's because business needs custom behaviors and even the
market itself can shift. While we're building the old
way, which was gathering everything up front, locking it
down and hanging it over just doesn't cut it anymore, and
(00:24):
neither does it chopping it intosmall bits and going back and
refining it as an agile. So today we're going to explore
continuous discovery, the practice of keeping discovery
alive through the entire projector product life cycle.
This approach isn't about doing more work, it's about doing
(00:46):
smarter work, staying connected to the real world, testing
assumptions, and delivering value that truly sticks.
The Better Business Analysis Institute presence, the Better
Business Analysis podcast with Kingsman Walsh.
(01:07):
Welcome back everyone. That's right.
We're going to be talking about continuous discovery.
And yes, it falls into category of continuous delivery and
continuous integration. And this naturally fits in from
the BA and product management lens.
By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what
(01:28):
continuous discovery looks like and why it matters for your
career as ABA. The first point that I want to
focus on when we talk about continuous delivery, as we know
be that agile delivery team or awaterfall team or what I would
just call a traditional enterprise team, you are doing
(01:52):
the discovery upfront and it stops too early.
Continuous discovery helps keep us closer to the real needs and
it reduces waste and builds realvalue.
And continuous delivering simpleterms is about continuously
engaging with stakeholders, customers and data throughout
(02:15):
the delivery life cycle, not just upfront.
Now there's a spectrum here. Agile delivery says go back to
your product owner. The product owner will be able
to work out of the business needs have changed and they will
work with you on what is the price, right?
So it's a bit of a, if you like,a bit of a bottom up approach in
(02:41):
terms of the fact that the Agileteam is waiting for work and
they're really driving the Agilemachine.
But continuous discovery is moreof a product management
discipline in terms of if if youthink about who is driving it
and it's the fact that it's the market, it's actually taking it
one step further from agile and talking about the fact that you
(03:04):
need to discover, go out to the market and rediscover and, and
continuously discover what people need.
So think about it as you're moving from a one time workshop
to maybe a weekly conversation with your market, not just your
stakeholders, which you might bedoing today with agile.
And if you are, you know, that is the first step.
(03:26):
And it matters because there's an increasing pace of change out
there. And we know that requirements
age quickly. We, you know, Agile was there to
solve that problem, but what it didn't solve was that the
products are never done and theyevolve and what our customer
needs are and the jobs that theywant getting done and what our
(03:48):
competition's doing also changes.
So it's not enough to just have that internal look.
You need to look externally, which is what the strategic
analysis is all about. Leadership want to see faster,
you know, return on investments.They want, you know, the money
back faster. And so therefore they want
customer dollars coming through.They want the idea of using
(04:13):
continuous discovery to reduce wasted investment at every point
now. So that's the that's the
important bit. With Agile, you can release a
product, you can get instant feedback.
That's fantastic, but it assumesthat you're still that the
product and all the assumptions and the direction you're going
in hasn't actually changed. You've got a product roadmate,
right? But this is actually really
(04:35):
looking at your product road mapin a proper sense.
So it ties to, I guess BA growthbecause continuous discovery
positions the BA as strategic advisors, not describes again.
And this is really important because it's not really, I would
say the strength of an Angelus who's really about delivery,
(04:56):
which is fantastic. And that, you know, they, they
understand these concepts and they could move there.
But I think it's provides a position on the chess board for
ABA to be more of an attacking as opposed to a defensive move.
And in that analogy, what I'm trying to say is we can go up
front, right? And with the evolution of AIBAS
(05:18):
can actually get market analysisdone way quicker.
So can product managers. So this is kind of a domain that
they both might be looking at, but a product manager won't be
looking across processes. So that's where the BA can step
up and start doing these things.Now how you can practice this is
that you need to have customer conversations right on repeat.
(05:41):
Regular touch points with it's end users is what my notes say.
I I'm I'm disagreeing with myself.
This is really around the end customer having a a voice
because that is where the value is here.
You might have fortnightly customer interviews for a
banking app. That's a product situation.
(06:03):
You might have regular conversation with people who use
your services. That would be a process
conversation. You've going to integrate what
we call hypothesis driven requirements.
Some great resources in the product management world.
(06:23):
Alex Cohen is a really good guy to look up.
You frame requirements as assumptions, right?
Because that's what your team might be doing.
That's might be with a kind of oil the machine might go.
So your team might get some agile requirements and then you
can test them as assumptions, not as truths.
And then you can say we believe that X will help Y and achieve Z
(06:50):
and we all know it's right when X happens.
This is a really good hypothesisdriven requirement approach.
And then what you do is you rapidly go out to the customer.
This is external. You don't wait for full specs,
you test with wireframes and mockups and low code prototypes
which are really easy to do now and set another skill that BA
(07:12):
should learn, which I'll talk about next week.
You might have a click through demo and you test it with 10
actual customers before a line of code is written or you've
actually written the detailed technical requirements.
You BA's can actually monitor adoption, usage and value
delivery across the the product and process life cycles.
(07:33):
And you can build KPIs into youracceptance criteria.
That's a tip. You're actually collaborating
with product owners and product managers and you're shifting
from project scope to product value.
And a lot of product owners don't understand that side
because they're not business, they're really product focused.
(07:55):
Continuous discovery Blues, the line between ABA and some
product roles. It does.
And that's actually a good thingbecause this is usually missed.
Take a retail company and it's launching a new e-commerce
feature. Instead of 1 big requirement
phase, the BA sets up weekly discovery with the customer
(08:17):
services team that is feeding itreal insights from customers
that they've spoken to. And they might really find that
there's friction in the checkoutarea and they're going to fix
that area. And then that's the feature that
you're going to focus on. That takes priority and
conversions jump. So continuous discovery is about
hearing from the customer, not from the product owner, OK,
(08:40):
Agile, directly from the customer's voice using
mechanisms that the BA will knowabout your processes of input
touch points. And then suddenly it's smart
work, you're missing out a wholelot of ceremonies, a whole lot
of drama and programmatization and backlog refinement.
You're getting to really what the customer really wants.
(09:03):
So if you make discovery habitual, not a one off, and you
treat those requirements as actually living proactive
triggers, stay curious and ask the right questions and ask more
questions and you partner with UX, right?
And your product managers, you will be able to continuously
(09:25):
discover your way to actually adding customer value, which a
lot of BAS don't see every day. Continuous discovery keeps us
aligned with reality, not assumptions.
For BAS, it's the bridge from a tactical analyst to a strategic
advisor, which is where BAS needto go.
If this resonates with you, share this episode with fellow
(09:45):
BAS who are stuck in the old school requirements or just
Agile mode together. Let's raise the bar for a
rofession and start talking about continuous discovery led
by Bas.
How often have you delivered on all the requirements only to
discover the solution still doesn't hit the mark?
That's because business needs custom behaviors and even the
market itself can shift. While we're building the old
way, which was gathering everything up front, locking it
down and hanging it over just doesn't cut it anymore, and
(00:24):
neither does it chopping it intosmall bits and going back and
refining it as an agile. So today we're going to explore
continuous discovery, the practice of keeping discovery
alive through the entire projector product life cycle.
This approach isn't about doing more work, it's about doing
(00:46):
smarter work, staying connected to the real world, testing
assumptions, and delivering value that truly sticks.
The Better Business Analysis Institute presence, the Better
Business Analysis podcast with Kingsman Walsh.
(01:07):
Welcome back everyone. That's right.
We're going to be talking about continuous discovery.
And yes, it falls into category of continuous delivery and
continuous integration. And this naturally fits in from
the BA and product management lens.
By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly what
(01:28):
continuous discovery looks like and why it matters for your
career as ABA. The first point that I want to
focus on when we talk about continuous delivery, as we know
be that agile delivery team or awaterfall team or what I would
just call a traditional enterprise team, you are doing
(01:52):
the discovery upfront and it stops too early.
Continuous discovery helps keep us closer to the real needs and
it reduces waste and builds realvalue.
And continuous delivering simpleterms is about continuously
engaging with stakeholders, customers and data throughout
(02:15):
the delivery life cycle, not just upfront.
Now there's a spectrum here. Agile delivery says go back to
your product owner. The product owner will be able
to work out of the business needs have changed and they will
work with you on what is the price, right?
So it's a bit of a, if you like,a bit of a bottom up approach in
(02:41):
terms of the fact that the Agileteam is waiting for work and
they're really driving the Agilemachine.
But continuous discovery is moreof a product management
discipline in terms of if if youthink about who is driving it
and it's the fact that it's the market, it's actually taking it
one step further from agile and talking about the fact that you
(03:04):
need to discover, go out to the market and rediscover and, and
continuously discover what people need.
So think about it as you're moving from a one time workshop
to maybe a weekly conversation with your market, not just your
stakeholders, which you might bedoing today with agile.
And if you are, you know, that is the first step.
(03:26):
And it matters because there's an increasing pace of change out
there. And we know that requirements
age quickly. We, you know, Agile was there to
solve that problem, but what it didn't solve was that the
products are never done and theyevolve and what our customer
needs are and the jobs that theywant getting done and what our
(03:48):
competition's doing also changes.
So it's not enough to just have that internal look.
You need to look externally, which is what the strategic
analysis is all about. Leadership want to see faster,
you know, return on investments.They want, you know, the money
back faster. And so therefore they want
customer dollars coming through.They want the idea of using
(04:13):
continuous discovery to reduce wasted investment at every point
now. So that's the that's the
important bit. With Agile, you can release a
product, you can get instant feedback.
That's fantastic, but it assumesthat you're still that the
product and all the assumptions and the direction you're going
in hasn't actually changed. You've got a product roadmate,
right? But this is actually really
(04:35):
looking at your product road mapin a proper sense.
So it ties to, I guess BA growthbecause continuous discovery
positions the BA as strategic advisors, not describes again.
And this is really important because it's not really, I would
say the strength of an Angelus who's really about delivery,
(04:56):
which is fantastic. And that, you know, they, they
understand these concepts and they could move there.
But I think it's provides a position on the chess board for
ABA to be more of an attacking as opposed to a defensive move.
And in that analogy, what I'm trying to say is we can go up
front, right? And with the evolution of AIBAS
(05:18):
can actually get market analysisdone way quicker.
So can product managers. So this is kind of a domain that
they both might be looking at, but a product manager won't be
looking across processes. So that's where the BA can step
up and start doing these things.Now how you can practice this is
that you need to have customer conversations right on repeat.
(05:41):
Regular touch points with it's end users is what my notes say.
I I'm I'm disagreeing with myself.
This is really around the end customer having a a voice
because that is where the value is here.
You might have fortnightly customer interviews for a
banking app. That's a product situation.
(06:03):
You might have regular conversation with people who use
your services. That would be a process
conversation. You've going to integrate what
we call hypothesis driven requirements.
Some great resources in the product management world.
(06:23):
Alex Cohen is a really good guy to look up.
You frame requirements as assumptions, right?
Because that's what your team might be doing.
That's might be with a kind of oil the machine might go.
So your team might get some agile requirements and then you
can test them as assumptions, not as truths.
And then you can say we believe that X will help Y and achieve Z
(06:50):
and we all know it's right when X happens.
This is a really good hypothesisdriven requirement approach.
And then what you do is you rapidly go out to the customer.
This is external. You don't wait for full specs,
you test with wireframes and mockups and low code prototypes
which are really easy to do now and set another skill that BA
(07:12):
should learn, which I'll talk about next week.
You might have a click through demo and you test it with 10
actual customers before a line of code is written or you've
actually written the detailed technical requirements.
You BA's can actually monitor adoption, usage and value
delivery across the the product and process life cycles.
(07:33):
And you can build KPIs into youracceptance criteria.
That's a tip. You're actually collaborating
with product owners and product managers and you're shifting
from project scope to product value.
And a lot of product owners don't understand that side
because they're not business, they're really product focused.
(07:55):
Continuous discovery Blues, the line between ABA and some
product roles. It does.
And that's actually a good thingbecause this is usually missed.
Take a retail company and it's launching a new e-commerce
feature. Instead of 1 big requirement
phase, the BA sets up weekly discovery with the customer
(08:17):
services team that is feeding itreal insights from customers
that they've spoken to. And they might really find that
there's friction in the checkoutarea and they're going to fix
that area. And then that's the feature that
you're going to focus on. That takes priority and
conversions jump. So continuous discovery is about
hearing from the customer, not from the product owner, OK,
(08:40):
Agile, directly from the customer's voice using
mechanisms that the BA will knowabout your processes of input
touch points. And then suddenly it's smart
work, you're missing out a wholelot of ceremonies, a whole lot
of drama and programmatization and backlog refinement.
You're getting to really what the customer really wants.
(09:03):
So if you make discovery habitual, not a one off, and you
treat those requirements as actually living proactive
triggers, stay curious and ask the right questions and ask more
questions and you partner with UX, right?
And your product managers, you will be able to continuously
(09:25):
discover your way to actually adding customer value, which a
lot of BAS don't see every day. Continuous discovery keeps us
aligned with reality, not assumptions.
For BAS, it's the bridge from a tactical analyst to a strategic
advisor, which is where BAS needto go.
If this resonates with you, share this episode with fellow
(09:45):
BAS who are stuck in the old school requirements or just
Agile mode together. Let's raise the bar for a
rofession and start talking about continuous discovery led
by Bas.
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