This guide outlines how concentrating on the discovery phase of project management can boost your success and productivity.
A smart project manager knows that proper discovery phase preparation of any endeavor is equally important as the final results themselves. That kind of thinking is a significant part of many business successes worldwide.
The understanding of the discovery phase is therefore important. But what does that even mean, the discovery phase? Why is it so vital for keeping the right track of productivity and how to manage it? Let’s take a closer look.
What is a discovery phase?
The phase is research, brainstorming, planning and prediction of eventual problems. During this phase, technical requirements are also discussed, software that is going to be helpful (or not), client specification, target audience, priorities of particular goals… Every project must be discovered first before it even gets started.
The discovery phase allows people to know exactly what they need to do in order to secure the success of their projects by avoiding mistakes during execution. In other words, discovery phase services help in enhancing general productivity by eliminating inefficient and faulty factors. The project discovery should begin before the actual production, and managers involved in the endeavor should be present during this process.
Project discovery phase services
Development of the project can be difficult and time-consuming, that’s true. Luckily, there are firms out there that specialize in such services. They can actually help in organizing the effort and discover the project for the execution team.
Professionals know what to focus on, and how to build a complex plan for the whole enterprise. The most crucial matters can be emphasized this way. The biggest risks reduced. By detailed anticipation of potential mistakes, the best path can be determined.
As a result, a company’s workflow ALWAYS runs smoother. And it has been proven many times over that hiring an outside company to do just that is the right call because the inside team sometimes lacks the perspective an outsider has. It’s nothing unusual, mind you. It’s just the way things are.
Steps for discovery phase
Step one: be curious
The discovery process is a stage of the project where the whole team commits to define the main business objectives, the desired results, and the goals and metrics of the future.
A discovery process is required at all times when there are many doubts, or when a team is not aligned on where it wants to go.
In it, everyone involved is willing to understand who the users are, what their needs are, what they need, want and value and why, as well as their greatest difficulties. Here, it explores why and how certain situations occur in order to define what the main problem to solve and what opportunities it brings.
Within this phase it is worth understanding business constraints and exploring existing technologies before any interface or code begins to be developed.
And why is it necessary to be curious? Well, first because to fulfill all the tasks listed above one must be really willing to explore every part of the process as well as to establish how each of these parts architects the final product.
UX Research (or user experience research) is a large part of the discovery process, because from it it is possible to detect previously unknown points, rather than stating what is already known, or what is thought to be known, preventing the team from making decisions from incomplete information.
And second, because the answer to how to perform a good workshop, believe me, is not only how different methods and tools combine, scale or adapt, but rather in the ability to investigate a problem without making it fit into a technology or solution.
A discovery process does not involve testing a hypothesis, collecting requirements, or validating a solution. Being curious here is about exploring a problem and its opportunities, as well as learning about what is not yet known, and not about making an already idealized product work for a particular audience or in a given scenario.
Distorting a discovery process helps that contrary insights are not recognized and prevents actions from being taken if insights are identified that go against an already predetermined solution.
Although the result of a discovery is, in general, the consensus on which problem should be solved, as well as what the expected results are, its objective should be, above all, broad.
Step two: be willing to look stupid
It’s really not the answers that move the world. It’s the questions, the snowball questions, the ones that no one asks because they seem too obvious or too stupid to ask out loud – and like no one else does, no one knows the answer. Questions like these provide the perfect space for problems to camouflage and get bigger and bigger.
A good discovery process involves a multidisciplinary team, composed of several roles depending on the type of solution that is built. However, the main ones are: a UX Research that can plan and conduct research, someone who can facilitate the workshop or lead the team ensuring good communication during the discovery process, a project manager (OP), and people able to explore available technologies as well as point out technical constraints, such as a development team.
This team should investigate the scenario in order to first expand their understanding, through a process of divergence, about the whole context. Then, with this knowledge, define, from a convergence process, what the main problem, in so as to proceed to the idealization and testing stage.
The team needs to discuss these issues together so that, in the end, they don’t have to consolidate information about problem insights that go against the decisions made about the solution.
In addition, it is important that not only one person has all the knowledge about the problem, but the whole team, so that all points of view are discussed and everyone can stay aligned.
Step three: be accommodating
The environment of a discovery process needs to ensure that people feel comfortable enough to ask snowball-like questions, so everyone needs to be kind.
During a discovery process, exploratory research can be conducted in order to learn and generate insights into the context of the problem – this type of research may involve questionnaires, user interviews, study journals, and field studies.
Interviews with stakeholders can also be conducted in order to provide an additional layer of insights, which will allow us to understand the key objectives of the organization, the problems that affect behind the scenes, and the solutions that have already been used. Interviews with stakeholders can also help define the scale of the problem and later define the feasibility of each of the proposed solutions.
Finally, workshops can be held, which allow not only the alignment of the team on the expected objectives, but also the conductof research activities in order to explore data, map activities and prioritize key issues.
The application of these methods requires a good amount of time spent together to complete understanding the context of the problem and its opportunities, which sometimes generates anxiety and expectations, both feelings that can become combustion for inflamed discussions throughout the project. So don’t forget to be kind and adopt the mindset that everyone involved in this project is committed to finding what is best for it.
Step four: have perseverance.
Much of the discovery processes provide complete understanding of the context by all, as well as evidence that supports the definition of the defined main problem, research data that provides journeys and user profiles, short- and long-term goals, wireframes, and prioritization of where to direct efforts.
With this, at the end of discovery, we will have some ideas of solutions clear enough to follow for testing, and others that demonstrate that it is not worth taking the next step. This understanding is very convenient for us to identify, from an early age, where the real opportunities are, avoiding rework, efforts and unnecessary costs.
Discovery processes can be tiring because they require a certain amount of time to be invested by the team exploring contexts (on average 4 weeks). But, in counterpoint, discovery allows, in addition to following with a team that really understands your product, anticipate scenarios, reducing the risk of building a product that will not succeed in the market or meeting an internal demand.
It is at this stage that we quickly validate functionalities, flows and concepts, thus optimizing time and money. Here at at ateliware, during the discovery process we add your ideas with our knowledge in design, technology and software engineering. With this, we have a solution ready for development and consistent with your business needs.
Discovery is recommended for those who have already built or are thinking about building a product, and want to make sure that you will invest resources in something that will bring good results.
Conclusion
So, it’s quite clear there can be many key benefits of pro discovery phase services. Thanks to them, the whole development process alongside company’s productivity is more efficient and less troublesome.
Why waste time on problem-solving during an eventual crisis? Why risk huge money loses because of badly executed planning stage? Exactly! If the discovery phase is managed properly, such issues won’t even exist.
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