About the Guest: Tim Herbig is a Product Management Coach who helps companies treat their ways of working like products by focusing on value over theoretical correctness. With over a decade of hands-on experience across B2C and B2B products, Tim brings unique insight into making product practices truly valuable in different contexts. Through his consulting and training, Tim helps product teams move beyond rigid frameworks by connecting strategy, OKRs, and discovery in ways that work for their specific situation.
Product teams love frameworks. “Spend 80% on discovery and 20% building.” “Do 2 weeks of discovery, then 4 weeks of building.” But these frameworks can also become traps.
These principles are comforting because they create the illusion of control. You know what you’re supposed to be doing. You can measure against it. It feels like you’re being intentional. You’re doing something, following a formula. There’s a difference between feeling in control and actually being in control. Most teams mistake the formula for wisdom.
Tim Herbig, a product coach who works with teams globally, says these frameworks are backward. And they’re costing you speed and confidence. He’s watched teams follow the 80/20 discovery rule religiously and then wonder why they either over-researched a problem they’d already solved or shipped something wrong because they’d hit their “discovery quota” and ran out of time. His advice: forget the ratio.
The real principle is simpler: let uncertainty and risk drive where you actually focus, not a predetermined ratio.
The Ratio Trap
Here’s the problem: when you prescribe a fixed discovery-to-building ratio (the infamous 80/20 split), you create perverse incentives that make teams move slower, not faster.
Some teams get stuck in analysis paralysis. They’re trying to hit their “discovery quota” even after they already know the answer. Over-research. Too many customer interviews. Too much time in discovery because they haven’t “done enough” - even though more research won’t change the direction or decision.
Other teams rush through discovery because they’ve hit the time limit. “We’ve already spent our 80% on discovery. Time to build.” Even though they’re still uncertain about fundamental assumptions. They ship with unresolved risk because the ratio said so.
Neither outcome is fast. Neither is thoughtful. Both are driven by a number, not by actual clarity. Speed and thoughtfulness both get sacrificed at the altar of consistency.
Tim on why dogmatic discovery ratios create the wrong incentives and how to think about it differently
When you prescribe discovery / delivery ratios for product teams, you’re anchoring on the wrong metric entirely. You're optimizing for the calendar milestone, not for reducing risk. That’s the opposite of moving fast - it’s moving on schedule, which is a very different thing.
