How to Structure a Discover Phase

Within the Discover phase, there should be two phases: scoping and analysis. Scoping we have already gone over above in the scoping section. The initial scoping phase should be done on your own or done internally with your team.

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During the Discover phase, we make sure our development partner is actively involved in discovering potential risks and creating mitigation plans, as well as planning the rest of the milestones.

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Since our milestones are sequential and require the previous milestone to be completed and approved, we ask our developers to identify any dependencies in the project. For example, if there's a lot of server work that needs to be laid down as the foundation, the next milestone after analysis and design should be backend server work.

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The most important element is that your developers must be actively involved in the process. They are going to be performing the work during the milestone, and the Discover phase is their chance to familiarize themselves with the problem your business is trying to solve.

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After the project kicks off, your development team should go through an analysis phase with you. This phase is normally done in parallel with the design phase (if you're building a product from scratch). In the analysis phase, your partner firm should ask you a lot of clarifying questions about your platform and how you'd want it built.

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This is where you want to identify risks and the potential effects of each risk on project timeline and budget. Keep in mind that it's normal for the total cost of the project to go up after the analysis phase because there will most likely be new things discovered that you weren't able to convey in your initial scope document.

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Now that your development partner understands the problem your product is solving, it's time to begin the project in earnest. Before you can start on software development work, however, you must first design your product.