Imagine building a house—before you do so, you need a blueprint; the very idea of what you’re building, how, and where. It is the scope of project discovery phase for software. The initial first step includes everything prior, like mockups, tech research, non-functional requirements, and other deliverables like these.
The discovery process can often be overlooked, however, the benefits of including it in your project development process are infinite. It can make the whole work on the development much more cost-effective, allowing you to make necessary changes to the project early. Plus, it doesn’t take forever to do.
In this article, Sloboda Studio aims to explain this important stage of the software development process as an integral part of the work. As well as debunk myths and misconceptions connected to it.
What is the Discovery Phase?
The project discovery phase is an integral first step in the work on the software project. The main objectives of this process are gathering comprehensive information and data about the project and its scope, including business goals, customer needs, business market viability, and technical feasibility. This deep understanding and hard work help refine the product concept, define requirements, and set the stage to make a good project.
Discovery involves:
- Deep analysis of the product idea;
- Review of software solution requirements;
- Evaluation of the possible challenges & risks.
Does this mean that every project needs a discovery phase?
Shortly speaking, you need this stage for most projects built from scratch. It can help in formulating the software requirements specification (SRS), which is without overestimation the most important document for the scope of the software project development. It also might help shorten the period it takes to make the software since you won’t have to redo anything.
We, at Sloboda Studio, treat this process as a part of the software project development that cannot be separated. Hence, it doesn’t entail any additional costs or services. For us, the discovery stage is a necessary blueprint that ensures smooth sailing in all stages after it.
However, in some cases, we acknowledge that this phase might be omitted.
Do You Need Project Discovery Phase?
Why is the Project Discovery Phase Important?
In essence, the goal of the discovery phase is to build a bridge between the idea and its best possible implementation. It lays the groundwork for the entire project by ensuring every stakeholder is on the same page regarding the goals, technical needs, and requirements.
This phase also enables the team and the client to identify the scope earlier and discover potential bottlenecks before the start of the work. And this might save a lot of time.
By identifying potential roadblocks and challenges early on, you can assess the feasibility of the project and make informed decisions.
Through user research conducted in this stage, stakeholders gain valuable insights to develop a product that resonates with the target audience’s pain points. And, overall, by investing time to understand the project and its scope thoroughly, you’re more likely to deliver a solution that meets expectations.
What makes this process even easier is that the people involved in working on it are most often but not always the people you’d want to see in your team in any case. So, the team includes a business analyst, project manager, designer, and technical specialists. The phase itself usually takes time up to between 2-3 weeks.
As a result of the above-mentioned discovery research, the team provides a client with:
- Mockups
- System Architecture
- Tech Research
- Simplified Non-Functional Requirements
- Refined Quote and Backlog Based on Discovered Information and Data
Need a discovery phase for your future product?
Benefits of the Discovery Phase
The discovery phase is like taking a step back to plan your route, ensuring you have the right supplies, and understanding the terrain ahead. It allows you to form a solid plan for the future before rushing ahead. You’ll get an opportunity to thoroughly plan the budget, know how much time the project is going to take, form a perfect team, and even create a pitch.
A solid development plan
The discovery phase of the project can help dispelling uncertainties before the development process. This stage provides the project with a clear purpose and direction for the project development: it foresees challenges, finds the best solutions, understands requirements, and gives estimations.
Laser-focus on user needs
Users are the ones to examine and buy your product. So, this means a user’s needs and requirements are a top priority when defining the core functionality of the solution.
Beginning the project, our team starts with identifying the user roles. By analyzing the target audience, our team helps to classify it, get a picture of basic users’ abilities, and create a customer flow.
Budget Planning
By planning every aspect of a project and its scope, the founders reduce the risks of such hidden surprises as additional costs. During the discovery phase of a software project, a team chooses the most suitable technology stack and core features estimates the effort, and predicts the time of the project launch.
Finding the Right Team
You can identify the specific skill sets needed for success by clearly defining project goals, requirements and technical needs. This will enable you to clearly define which team members you need.
Therefore, you’d hire experts with the most relevant experience and expertise, forming a team that can navigate the project effectively from start to finish.
A good part here is that in some cases you can take the results of your discovery phase of a project and go on with other software project developers, taking the discovery phase results as a basis.
Project Discovery Phase as a Killer Pitch Deck
The project discovery phase is what can help startups build their pitch deck. Since it’s all about the discovery of your product, it allows you to form a better understanding of which needs your startup covers. Hence, you know what to pitch to the investors.
Other data you might gather from it, is the complexity of the project, the idea’s feasibility, and potential milestones for return of investments. The more numbers and calculations there are, the more transparent and desirable the pitch deck is going to be.
What if You Skip the Discovery Phase?
Examples of how ignoring the project discovery phase has led startups to fail:
- Dinnr, a London-based company that delivered ingredients with recipes to prepare a meal at home, shut down after two years of operation and raising £60K during a seed round. Michal Bohanes, one of the founders, reveals the reason for their failure.
- Another company that could have done better over the lack of research is Juicero, a Silicon Valley startup that focused on selling home cold-pressed juicing systems. It appeared that the product’s functionality wasn’t carefully thought through as it was more affordable to buy fresh ingredients and juice them at home. Juciero dropped prices from $699 to $399, yet still was going through a rapid loss, shedding approximately $4 million a month.
- While Google dominates search and other online services, Google+ aimed to compete in social media. However, the platform struggled to carve out a distinct niche and user base. Critics pointed out a lack of a clear target audience and purpose since most of its features doubled other Google projects like Google Photos or Hangouts. A strong discovery can help identify and address this to make the audience want to use the solution. Google+ eventually shut down in 2019 after it was revealed that 90% of user sessions didn’t last longer than 5 seconds.
- The Fire Phone from Amazon was a commercial flop for several reasons. First, it was too expensive. Second, it used a unique app store that did not have a lot of apps normal Android would have. Also, the product boasted unique features like Firefly object recognition, but these didn’t resonate with users. Compared to other phones of that time, it becomes obvious that the Fire Phone did fail due to its inability to withstand competition. Business market research might have revealed these features weren’t high priorities for consumers.
All these problems could have been overcome if only they had conducted the necessary discovery research on their idea and the market.
Do you want a discovery phase for your project?
How We Conduct the Discovery Phase at Sloboda Studio
At Sloboda Studio we pay great attention to the planning stages of a project. The project discovery phase in a project is an initial phase and actually vectors the whole process.
The steps for the discovery phase, though, would generally remain the same for most software project development companies. So, let’s quickly run through them, to gain a better understanding of this phase process.
Defining the Goals
At the very beginning of the discovery stage, our team establishes the problem that the project aims to solve. We determine the current state of the product and hear out the requirements. This information we use at all steps of the discovery stage.
This phase can pose questions:
- Problem-solving: What is a problem that your product and your business solve? Is it a HOT issue?
- Time-to-market: Does time play an important role in a project launch?
- Competition: What is the situation in your business’ market? How dense is the competition?
- Differentiation: What is the Unique Value Proposition (UVP) of the solution and your business?
- Revenue model: How are you going to monetize your project?
- Promotion: What is the plan for acquiring customers for your business?
- Target audience: Who is the target audience of your business / project?
- Investment: Is there a plan for fundraising or bootstrapping?
Market Research
During the next steps of the discovery phase of the project in marketing domain, we conduct a comparative analysis of direct and indirect competitors and find out if a product has any analogs in the domain.
This kind of research we use later to give the developers an understanding of what kind of functionality competitors’ projects have, which of the features of competitors’ projects would also be essential for the project and which ones should be omitted.
After performing competitor research, we move over to user research. In doing discovery research on the target audience, we lay the groundwork for the next stage.
Customer Journey Map
Here at Sloboda Studio, our team creates a prioritized list of job stories.
We all have a number of tasks that need to be done, whether it’s to get a kid to school or to do grocery shopping. Likewise, users have different roles while using a product.
Our team considers all the users’ needs and figures out the greatest possible number of users’ jobs this particular product helps to solve. All this work is done to create the user flow that would fit the domain.
UX Concept & Wireframes
The previous step gives us a quick kickstart to creating a high-level vision of layouts. In essence, we build wireframes that depict the user experience approach, then create the design and mockups.
Technical Solutions
At the final stage of the discovery phase of a project, our team plans the product architecture and breaks down a product’s functionality into several milestones for better, easier, and more agile discovery phase planning.
The features are prioritized by their value. Those features that are most likely to be affected by business environment changes are left for later development.
Besides this, we come up with the optimal technology stack according to the defined core features of the product and its budget.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, every startup’s goal is to see its business grow, expand, and become successful.
It is also important to note that the discovery stage is very budget-friendly, as it only consists of a few steps and usually takes time up to not longer than 2-3 weeks. Here are the stages we at Sloboda Studio usually have:
- Defining the aims
- Market research
- Customer journey map
- UX concept & wireframes
- Technical solutions
Sometimes startuppers tend to put their heart and soul solely into an idea. They forget to think of the details. That’s when they get into trouble and the project implementation gets chaotic and unstructured. Whether we like it or not – success is not only about the idea, sometimes it is all about the proper implementation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the discovery phase influence the overall budget of the project?
By identifying potential issues early and defining the project scope clearly, the discovery phase can help control and potentially reduce the overall budget by avoiding rework and late-stage changes. For many projects, this phase is essential for success. Overall, the deliverables might help you save resources and improve the development.
Who should be involved in the discovery phase from the client’s side?
There are no projects like one another, but whoever has decision-making power and a deep understanding of the project aims, scope, and target audience would be beneficial in leading to success. The team pays a big role in the final deliverables, so consider carefully who you work with.
What are the main activities of the discovery phase?
The main steps of the discovery phase include:
- Defining project goals and the scope
- Conducting research of the domain
- Creating a customer journey map
- Developing UX concepts and wireframes
- Determining technical solutions (including technology stack)
However, note that this might be different for various projects. They might need different steps to reach roaring success. But most of the companies, however, undergo these steps to reach the maximum from their deliverables in the end.
How long does the discovery phase typically take?
The discovery phase typically takes 2-3 weeks worth of time. Though, different projects need different amount of time.
What is the project discovery phase and why is it important?
The project discovery phase is the initial step in software project development. It involves gathering info data about the project, including goals, user needs, market viability, and technical feasibility. This helps ensure everyone involved is on the same page and reduces the risk of problems later in development. Usually, discovery phase can lead projects to massive success.
And yet, no two projects are alike, and though we strongly believe everyone needs the discovery phase, some business owners choose to skip it. What happens to those projects that do it you can read in our article!
