# Trash Can Tracking for Product Discovery

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-09-22

## Transcript

Hi folks.
This is all things product with Petra Villa and Teresa, of course.
And we're so happy you're here.
Petra.
I heard that you have this tactic called trash can tracking.
It makes me think of Oscar the Grouch from Sesame street.
I don't know why, but it does.
Trash can tracking.
Are you like keeping track of what you're recycling and not?
Oh yeah, Germans are very good at recycling.
Everybody knows that.
Every time I go to Europe, I go, wow, us Americans, we're jerks because we're not very good at this.
Germany won recycling.
The whole world knows we're already jerks.
So shocking.
But I have a feeling it's not about recycling.
Tell me what's the story with...
With the trash cans.
We got punchy.
It's going to be a fun episode.
What's the story with trash can tracking?
Yeah.
So I first maybe lead with the problem of what trash can tracking is solving.
Oftentimes I get asked either by leadership people, executives or teams, how do we know if we innovate enough?
Interesting question.
different slightly different question but able to be answered with the same trash can tracking technique um do we know if our discovery is actually a real discovery so both interesting questions now before you continue can i push on the first question for a second okay we have a little philosophical aside yeah x course should our goal be innovation Maybe that should be a whole separate episode.
We don't have to go on this side on this.
Yeah, the thing is, I think that strongly that depends on the company's vision and the company's strategy.
In some market and industries, there is a lot of pressure around innovation.
Then, of course, partial goal of your discovery should be being innovative and inventing things that maybe the competition has not yet invented.
But you are right for many, many companies.
It's more hygiene factors that are avoiding their success with the customer than it is the massive innovations.
That was my short answer.
Yeah.
And already, like, there's so many things I want to push back on.
You know what?
We're going to put a pin in this.
And I think we're going to record an episode called Unpacking Innovation.
Okay.
Let's go back.
I will prepare for that one.
Okay.
You identified two questions that you get often.
Are we being innovative enough?
And does our discovery work?
Yeah.
Now we will put a picture of the task words that I will be talking about in the show notes.
But for now, the people listening to this need to picture agile task words as we know them.
They have columns.
And to some of those columns, I love to attach a trash can symbol, which usually is most of the times just a symbol because virtual.
boards everywhere these days and none of these companies has yet taken my ass to put trash cans in their software.
So it's more virtual thing that we do.
But if we do the golden trash can, that's the most fun one.
The golden trash can is at the end of the delivery board.
So we do all the delivery.
We go through all the motions.
We put it live.
We put it in front of our users and then we realize, okay, nobody's using the feature or they hate the feature or they're not adopting the feature or the feature is not working in a way we was hoping the feature should be working and it's not solving their customer problem.
And then what most likely is not done is first of all, acknowledging that, number one, and then getting rid of the code again.
right?
Because that is what actually would make the difference.
So we realized it was not as successful as we were hoping for, and we would remove the code.
And that is the golden trash can because we went through discovery motions.
Then most likely there was not real discovery because otherwise we would have figured out earlier that it is a bonkers idea.
Then we built the entire thing.
We Q8ed it.
It was on our board forever.
We put it through all our release cycles and then we realize it's not working.
So that's the golden trash can.
We want to avoid stuff moving into that trash can at any cost.
And how do we do this?
Glad you're asking, Teresa.
Better discovery techniques.
Better discovery techniques would help us learn earlier what works and what doesn't.
And this is how we can avoid things ending up in that trash can.
That trash can has nothing to do with innovation, I'd say.
That's purely to see if discovery is working.
from my perspective.
Okay, can I respond?
Yeah, I love this idea, but I have some issue with your imagery.
I want the golden trash can on the discovery board.
Because we should celebrate when we put something in the golden trash can.
And on the delivery board, I want a dump truck.
We're tearing down the building.
Right?
Like a big bomb or like a demolition, like bringing the building down.
Look at this wasted effort.
And we should be already planning to redraw my illustrations.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
Okay.
That's cool.
Okay.
So let me just cover where we've been.
We have a trash can tracking.
What this means is on our discovery board, we're tracking.
No, no.
We have the delivery board.
I talk about the discovery board in a second.
On the delivery board.
We're throwing away things that after we released them and measured, they had no impact.
We're taking the time to remove that code and throw it away, which I am fully endorse, fully endorse.
I just want to prevent that from happening by having better discovery.
Exactly.
Now we're talking.
And now we're coming to the discovery board and that could be the same board.
I don't argue for you having to split task boards.
I don't care teams, but.
Discovery work should be as visible somewhere as your delivery work is.
That is what I'm advocating for here.
So wherever you put it, and I use two boards very closely located to each other and both owned by the team, the trio, whatever you call it.
But it's not a leadership board or something like that.
It's the team's working environment.
So we have a discovery board.
And in my world, that usually comes with columns like, have we understood the problem space well and have we defined the initial context well enough so that we can start to look at the solution space a bit more of discovery?
And then we have different experiments that we run in each phase, for example.
Do we need more information?
Do we need to go broader?
Or are we currently already and we have understood the problem well enough so that we can narrow down on a particular solution?
All of that needs to be tracked somewhere.
We have different columns for that.
And I like to place trash cans all along the way.
So, for example, if somebody brings us a problem and says, like, it's a big problem, and then we look into it and figure, yes, on full moon for 20 of our customers, it's a problem.
Then we can decide to trash it because it strategically has no relevance and solving that problem for very small.
part of our customer segment, but maybe it's our most valuable customers, then that's a different story, but you get the idea, right?
So there is a trash can there that we say like, we looked at the problem, not enough people had the problem.
So we're no longer looking into the problem, for example, or innovation.
So we saw a competitor doing something really new and fresh, and we wanted to find our own take on it.
And we run a few ideation sessions, a bit of brainstorming.
We had a few ideas and sketches, but it doesn't take us nowhere.
Or we figured it's...
From the beginning on, we need to partner with somebody else.
We don't have this partner at hand.
It takes us ages to find somebody.
So for the time being, we decide, okay, this idea is completely derailing us.
We're not longer pursuing it.
So it can be super innovative, but we've still put it in our trash can.
So that's an early trash can in a discovery.
And then there are them.
later discovery trash cans where you already have a decent prototype.
You maybe even put it in a re-click dummy.
You put users in front of it.
You had a scenario-based interview to see if they actually succeed in the task.
And then you could still learn down the line A, your problem discovery was not good enough and you learn too late.
that it's not a thing or B, the solution is just not what the people want.
A lot of my clients are seeing this right now with forms as an interface because people tend to learn they can talk to computers and they start to have this like, okay, but why can't I just like talk to the machine here?
Why do I have to fill all these boxes?
So that, for example, would be a later stage discovery finding that you say like, yeah, okay, this idea was nice.
The form that we designed was a solid form, but still we have to put it in a trash can because it's no longer working.
We have to find a different solution because the problem is still valid.
We have validated the problem.
Our solution was just not ideal.
And then we move it into the trash can as well.
And there are different ratios for both of these trash cans.
You can still say like, problem space discovery, if you're not moving a lot of ideas into that one, then maybe you should look at your innovation.
And we record another episode on that one.
If you're not moving stuff into this solution discovery thing, then your team is not thinking in options.
And that's not a good...
signal or sign either for a really kind of healthy discovery culture because you want to design different versions and then you want to trash four of them and one is then the winner version, for example.
So that there should be more things moving into these trash cans.
We don't want to avoid stuff moving into those ones.
That's what you would maybe call the golden trash can.
So we have learned something.
So we don't pursue this idea.
We don't think this problem is big enough or the form we designed is not performing.
or the feature that we designed is not delivering on the KPI that we were hoping it to drive or something like that.
And all these learnings are good, but they still might kill ideas.
They still might kill features.
And the trash can symbolizes that work that has happened.
So, okay.
I do like this a lot.
It sounds like you're making a distinction between if I throw away a customer, if I'm not throwing away customer problems, if I'm not deciding, like if I, if I, If I solve every customer problem that I encounter, the cost of that is I might not be innovating enough.
Or focused enough.
So your strategy is then not strategying.
Okay.
Because, yeah, then it's not saying no to certain customer problems that maybe your sales team is bringing.
Or maybe even the customers are sometimes suggesting stuff that is outside of your strategic corridor.
Yeah.
So I think when you first started describing this, I was like, why do you need multiple trash cans?
I can see this distinction between you want to track both things that you're throwing away.
We explored these customer problems.
We decided not to solve them for these reasons.
And that indicates one thing about your discovery.
We explored these solutions.
We decided not to solve them.
That uncovers something else about your discovery.
Yes, exactly.
Okay, so I buy in at that level.
I'm really curious about what each of those things mean.
So like at the solution level, I think you're absolutely right.
Like I, I hammer on comparing contrast decisions, comparing and contrasting multiple solutions.
We should be throwing things away constantly.
At the problem level, I find this really interesting.
Like, and especially because like some teams are being given customer problems to solve by their leadership.
And it makes me wonder, like, do they have the ability to throw that away?
And like, are leaders creating that culture where they can say we're not going to do this because we learned it's not that valuable?
And the trash cans are helping you have that conversation.
Yeah.
So then it's like there's a little bit of this cultural tension here.
So one thing that I, for example, think is if you're not trashing.
customer problems, basically, then maybe there is, it's another thing that you could look into is psychological safety, right?
So are you having an organization that is bubbling up customer problems?
So is every customer care agent able to bubble something up to the product team, every salesperson, every engineer, every intern, every board member, every executive, every customer, every client?
Right.
So you should be able to at least take them all in and then look at them real quickly through this filter or lens of your product vision, product strategy, maybe the goals that you currently try to pursue, whatever you have handy.
And then really do this quick assessment of is this problem worth solving for us as an organization?
that talks about how to assess these problems.
You need a bit of a structure for that assessment.
But that's a conversation to have.
And if you're not able to move things in the trash can, then this is because maybe you don't have enough problems coming in, then you can work on that.
Or you don't have a framework for trashing as in assessing them, then you can have a conversation in your organization.
Is there a framework or are there things that we always take into account when looking at the customer problem?
And this takes us down the road of what we always know.
So that's kind of have we looked at all four big risks of software development, yada, yada, yada.
So there's nothing new there or the cost of not doing it.
So the cost of not solving that customer problem, what is the opportunity cost there?
So it's very normal questions that we're having, but there should be things moving into this trash can.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
Like, I don't think we should be addressing every customer problem we encounter.
So I definitely agree that there should be a trash can for that.
I'm really, you got my wheels turning on what are the reasons why that might not be happening?
Like, if you're not doing that, what is that a symptom of?
And I think you've nailed a few of them.
I think it can definitely be a symptom of like, is there psychological safety to push back?
I think it...
could be a question of like, I guess if you, like the, the piece that I'm noodling on is I think there's this assumption that if you're not being innovative enough, you're not finding big enough customer problems that you couldn't do all of them.
Like that's the, the thread I'm trying to pull on is like, I'm trying not to have our innovation episode right now, but there's this like, There's this idea of like, if I can complete every customer problem that comes across my plate, am I looking at big enough customer problems?
I totally agree.
Yeah.
And then I do agree with the premise that like strategy, if you have a good strategy in place and if you have a clear vision, there are definitely customer problems you should be saying no to.
That's a good indicator that you have a strategy and a vision.
But I'm just wondering if there's a world where if I do really good discovery and I have a clear vision and I have a clear strategy, am I only putting customer problems on my board that have already been through that filter?
And so I am solving every customer problem I encounter and my trash can is empty.
And that's not necessarily a symptom that something's wrong.
It actually could be a signal that everything's just right.
Yeah, that's exactly.
So it's not.
it's not mutually exclusive.
So it can, that's why I love to do this in coaching situations when I know more about the company, the organization, their setup, the way they work, how good the strategy is, for example, because with my experience, I can then tell, is it rather an innovation symptom that there's nothing ending up in the trash can or is it more?
command and control hierarchy versus empowered teams kind of conversation that we need to have.
So you need a bit of experience or gut feeling or a senior product leader in the organization to be able to help the team understand why this actually is.
So there is no easy formula that I can handle this podcast to say like, hey, and if you see this, then it's always a symptom for that.
The other trash can, by the way, so it's easy for the trash can at the end of the process, right?
Then we know what the problem actually is.
And it's easier for the one, if the solution discovery trash can stays empty, then the team is not comparing and contrasting and not thinking in solution.
That's a clear symptom, I'd say.
But this early trash can that needs a bit more attention and a bit more context to have the conversation.
What symptom are we actually seeing here with this trash can staying empty or staying super full or only be used occasionally or all these kind of things?
Yeah, I like that.
I agree with you that it's certainly a signal and that it can encourage a conversation about what does the signal mean?
And I also like this like physical metaphor of we are deliberately moving this to the trash can.
Because I know for a lot of teams like that use opportunity solution trees, they might make a team decision not to address an opportunity.
But the rest of the organization may not be aware of that.
They might not know what they learned.
It's still being brought up by salespeople.
And so it's almost like this ritual of we are making this decision.
And we're the zombie opportunity.
Yeah, exactly.
This has been really fun.
I like this concept for how simple it is.
And I like that it really got us thinking about what does it mean to throw away a customer or a problem and what's the rate at which that should happen and what does that signal?
Yeah.
And we include a drawing in the show notes, then it's easier to follow the conversation.
And we have our next topic, which is always great.
Amazing.
Thanks, Teresa.
Thanks, Petra.