What You Need to Understand About Discovery Sessions
What is a discovery session?
Whenever you start a new custom software project, a discovery meeting is the first step. It's basically a meeting for the project team and client to discuss and understand the company’s needs, goals, strategies, and key processes. In other words, it's the act of gathering key project information so that enough high-level understanding is gained prior to the development work.
The first four questions focus on the problem we want to resolve, the project’s goals, any constraints (or restrictions), and the expected return on investment (ROI):
Project problem
Project scope
Project schedule
Project costs
During the discovery session we’ll learn about who the key project stakeholders are:
Who are the project sponsors (the person who pays)?
Who is the customer (the person that identifies the outcomes and approves them, and clarifies key business questions)?
Who are the end-users (those who will be using the solution)?
Key questions to resolve:
What’s the main problem that needs to be solved?
Does it save money or help to make money? Can it be quantified?
What’s the project’s outcome?
It could be a web app, internal business system, a collaboration tool, a prototype or minimal viable product, an upgrade, or a project rescue.
What’s the project’s timeframe?
During the discovery session, we’ll discuss the expected duration. Does it require fast-paced or cost-controlled development?
What’s the budget for the project?
During the discovery meeting, we’ll talk about an estimated budget and deliveries for the overall project.
Who’s the project sponsor?
The sponsor is the person or group that provides executive-level support and funds for the project. The sponsor has the ability to influence the project too.
Who’s the project customer?
The customer is the person or group that’s actively involved in defining what the product should look like, as well as the final outcome that’s expected.
Who’s the end-user?
During the discovery session, we’ll learn about the people who interact directly with the system.
What do you do during the session?
The core purpose of the meeting is intelligence gathering and planning:
Find out how the client resolves the main problem today
Estimate the costs of the problem today or the cost of missed opportunities
Understand the client’s core processes/workflows
Clarify the client’s expectations
Identify bottlenecks and potential risks
Describe high-level solutions to the expected or existing problems
Identify priorities and form a backlog with epics
Create a project roadmap
Wrapping it up
The ideal outcome of the discovery session is to gain a solid understanding of the project’s main components: problem, scope, schedule, and costs. To reach this knowledge during the discovery meeting, we’ll focus on the big picture first, and then try to go from the general to the specific. For example, what’s the big problem? What value do you bring to the end-user? Who are the sponsors? Is the purpose to make or save money? What are the expectations for a minimum viable product? Can you identify the high-level functionalities?
This important meeting helps to reduce the risks associated with typical software projects and helps to estimate the time to deliver and costs. The discovery session should never be ignored—the risks of not building the correct product are too high.