5 tips for a successful discovery phase

The discovery phase is not a new concept: the client explains about their business and what their expectations are from the project, while the implementation team asks questions to better understand the use case and their client. However, even if the discovery phase was successful with an agreed-upon specification from both sides, sometimes during the implementation phase or even towards the final stages of the project, new requirements may arise that could change the project’s direction.

To avoid this, we’ve gathered the 5 best tips from our Solution Architects:

1. One point of contact and project management from the client’s side.

In every project, there are touchpoints in different areas and tasks assigned to the client’s teams. Project management on the client’s side will help promote tasks, so that they are completed on time, thus preventing the project from slowing down and possibly even halting.

In complex projects where critical answers are scattered among different contacts, there must be an owner from the client’s side who ensures critical questions are answered or brings the right team member to answer them. The contact person is the address for any question or request from the implementation team and mediates between them and the relevant people from the client side. In projects where responsibility is divided between different teams without a project owner, there is a tendency to waste working hours in similar meetings with different teams, slower response times to questions and possible delays in the project.

2. Understanding the client’s business.

The discovery phase is the time to ask all questions about the business process, business insights, and possible new insights that may need to be developed. While these are understood and done in every project, the challenging part is to ensure a clear understanding of the client’s requirements and their business process, and that all important questions have been answered. For this purpose, it’s necessary to start by documenting the business process flow and mapping the team members in each part of the flow, ensuring they participate in meetings. That is, to determine in advance the subject and agenda for each discovery meeting, ensure that relevant people are part of the project’s specification, and ensure broad agreement within the client’s teams before implementation. A process flow document is a document that can be shared among all team members, including management, stockholders, and end users, to ensure that no stage in the discovery is missed.

3. Meeting with end-users early in the process.

During the discovery stage, all the experts are brought in: programmers, analysts, and the most technical people, overlooking the end users. Not involving end-users in the discovery phase might affect the project’s success, for example, certain logics may not be built or unnecessary visualizations may be done. Therefore, it’s advisable to invite them at least once during the discovery stage to receive feedback and guidance.

4. Data validation during the discovery.

Although the discovery phase is characterized by long discussions about logic, it is advisable to perform basic QA tests at the same time and verify the customer’s business logic with actual data. During the discovery phase, there is high motivation and teams are available for data queries and investigation, so this is the best time to check the quality of the data. It’s important to insist on receiving all the data from all sources, classifications, and future information (including its data structure).

5. Business decision changes.

Introducing a new product to a company can challenge business decisions that do not conform to market norms. This is because implementing business logic not aligned with a correct business process will force the implementation team to customize the implementation. Customization can be a good solution, but it also has drawbacks, such as complex product maintenance, system slowness, and prevention of innovations in the products themselves based on out-of-the-box features. In the discovery phase, the time comes when a decision must be made whether to implement the product according to the existing business logic or to update it and all the systems according to market norms. The choice to update old business decisions will lead to efficiency in all the company’s systems since the discovery phase removes the dust from old decisions, and leverages motivation to make moves within the company so that eventually the business logic will change.