The discovery phase is the cornerstone of any successful project. It’s the stage where ideas begin to form, problems are defined, and potential solutions take shape. The purpose of discovery is to uncover the unknowns and create a shared understanding among the team, stakeholders, and end-users. However, without careful attention, this phase can easily go off track, leading to misalignment, delays, or even the failure to deliver real value.
In Agile delivery, keeping teams focused during discovery is essential. Without a clear direction, teams can get lost in endless discussions, unnecessary research, or chasing irrelevant ideas—rabbit holes that lead nowhere. As an Agile Delivery Manager, your role is to ensure the discovery phase stays aligned with the project’s goals and that every conversation contributes to actionable insights.
Let’s explore how to keep discovery on track and make sure it delivers the results your project needs.
Why Teams Go Off Track in Discovery
Teams often stray during discovery due to a lack of clarity around objectives. When the scope isn’t clearly defined, or there’s uncertainty about the problem being solved, people can fall into the trap of focusing on “reckons”—things they think they know but haven’t validated. This leads to wasted time on irrelevant topics, or worse, developing solutions to problems that don’t actually exist.
Discovery also gets derailed when teams fail to engage with the right stakeholders or prioritise user needs. If you aren’t talking to the right people or asking the right questions, you may end up building something that doesn’t solve the core issues.
The key is to maintain focus on the user and the business problem, while asking probing questions that help cut through the noise.
Key Questions to Ask During Discovery
During discovery, asking the right questions will guide the team towards meaningful insights. Here are some essential ones to consider:
- How do we prioritise what to do first?
Sorting through the noise and focusing on what matters most is critical. Prioritisation ensures you work on high-impact tasks rather than low-value distractions. - What is the outcome we need?
Define what success looks like. Align the team around a clear vision to avoid ambiguity down the line. - Who should we be talking to first?
Identifying the right stakeholders early is vital. Speak to users, subject matter experts, and business leaders who understand the problem space. - What are the biggest problems users face day to day?
User pain points provide the direction for discovery. Get to the heart of what needs fixing by listening to those who experience the problem firsthand. - What are the constraints?
Whether it’s budget, time, or technical limitations, recognising constraints helps set realistic expectations and avoid scope creep. - What is the problem going to cost people?
Evaluate the impact of the problem on the business and users. If the cost of not solving it outweighs the investment to fix it, you’ve got a solid case for moving forward. - Do we know and agree on what problem we’re trying to resolve as an organisation?
Alignment across the organisation is non-negotiable. Ensure everyone is solving the same problem with a unified approach.
Discovery, Inception, and Kick-Off: Setting the Stage for Success
The discovery phase naturally leads into inception and kick-off, where the team formalises their approach. These early stages help to narrow the focus, set boundaries, and establish what success looks like.
Here’s how to break it down:
- Goals: What do we want to achieve?
- Reckons: What did we think we knew but might need to challenge?
- Stuff to Find Out: What gaps exist in our understanding?
- Rabbit Holes: What distractions or dead-ends should we avoid?
- Scope: What will we definitely do and what won’t we do?
- This is Not: What seems related but isn’t part of the project?
- Icebox: What ideas are worth parking for later consideration?
At the end of the kick-off, you should walk away with:
- A clear scope of work
- A roadmap that outlines the journey ahead
- A plan for stakeholder engagement
- A prioritised backlog of tasks
The 5-Step Discovery Model: Why It’s Useful
The 5-step discovery model provides a structured approach to uncovering and solving complex problems. It begins with defining the problem, ensuring the team has clarity before diving deeper. Next, research focuses on understanding the pain points users face, ensuring you’re solving real issues. By the time you move into the analysis phase, you’re making sense of those insights, which feeds into collaborative design—a critical step where solutions are brainstormed together, leveraging diverse perspectives. Finally, the hypothesis experiment allows you to test potential solutions quickly, reducing risk and uncertainty. This model is useful because it encourages a clear, step-by-step exploration that keeps the team focused, prevents assumptions from derailing progress, and ensures you’re building something meaningful for your users. An effective discovery phase can be structured around five key steps:
- Define: Clarify the problem statement.
- Research: Investigate user pain points.
- Analyse: Examine insights from the research.
- Collaborative Design: Brainstorm solutions as a team.
- Hypothesis Experiment: Test potential solutions to validate their effectiveness.
From Discovery to Action: Bridging the Gap
Once you’ve moved through the 5-step discovery model, the next challenge is turning insights into actionable plans. This transition is crucial—it’s where theoretical understanding begins to take shape as a real, deliverable solution. At this point, it’s important to start distilling the information gathered during discovery into a concrete roadmap. Identifying key patterns, validating assumptions, and aligning on priorities are essential steps to ensure that the team’s work moving forward is both effective and efficient. The insights gained from research and collaboration should now guide the creation of user journeys, technical requirements, and a clear development strategy, making sure that you’re set up for success as the project progresses beyond discovery.
7 Things to Know by the End of Discovery
By the end of the discovery phase, the team should have a firm understanding of:
- Who your users are and what they need.
- How to meet user needs with your service or product.
- Which services will solve the problems identified.
- What the user journey looks like end-to-end.
- How to begin development of the solution.
- The technical solutions required.
- The team needed to build and maintain the service.
Knowing Discovery is Done When….
Discovery is finished when you’ve identified a viable service or solution that will make life easier for your users. It’s also crucial to weigh up whether this solution is cost-effective—if the benefits of solving the problem outweigh the costs of continuing with the current state, you’re on the right path.
The discovery phase is about ensuring you’re solving the right problem with the right solution. By staying focused, asking the right questions, and ensuring alignment across the team, you’ll set a strong foundation for the rest of your project. As an Agile Delivery Manager, your role is to guide the team through this crucial phase, making sure that discovery leads to real value—not just more questions!