New to product: Build foundations · Core
Learn how a product goes from idea to results
Every product team moves through the same broad loop: understand the problem, choose a solution, build it, release it and learn from the results. Seeing the loop makes everything else make sense.
About 2-4 daysEvergreenLast reviewed 9 November 2026
Who this applies to
- Skills it builds
- Discovery and researchDelivery and execution
- PM types
- All
- Product types
- All
- Starting points
- Exploring product management
- Ways of working
- All
- Experience
- Beginner (under 1 year)
- Size of organisation
- All
Steps
- Learn the loop: discover the problem, define it, design a solution, plan the work, build, test, launch, then measure and learn. The phases in this site's plans follow it. Write one sentence on each.
- Read about the Double Diamond and sketch it. Note that the first diamond is about the problem and the second about the solution.
- Read how the discovery phase works in the GOV.UK Service Manual. Write down three things a team does and what it decides at the end.
- Match each phase to the risk it reduces: value, usability, feasibility or viability.
- Pick a product you use and write what each phase might have looked like, and where you can see evidence of it.
- Skim the Scrum Guide. Note the events and who does what. Remember that teams adapt the loop, and that it is not a straight line.
- Explain the whole loop out loud to someone in under three minutes, using your chosen product.
Tool examples
- Miro
- Draw the loop as a board with the questions each phase answers.
- Notion
- Write one page per phase with an example from a product you use.
Definition of done
- A one-page diagram of the loop in your own words
- You can explain the loop in three minutes
Common pitfalls
- Memorising frameworks without using them
- Believing the loop is a straight line, when teams often go back
- Treating one framework as the only way