What is Discovery Workshop in Software Development?

Table of Contents
Discovery Workshops are the pre-development stage of gathering relevant information and sharing it between the project team and the client.
This blog will cover the objectives of the discovery workshop, why it should not be ignored, and how it can help businesses in the long run.
Everything begins with a genuine idea but not all ideas transform into a real success. There is a grueling fact that the majority of the software development companies fail to deliver great software products with quality and functionality as expected.
Top software companies often give a great importance to this discovery phase as the first step towards building a successful software product.
What is Discovery Workshop?
Discovery Workshop is the pre-development stage of gathering and sharing relevant project information between client and Project Team. The project team normally includes the following:
- Project manager
- UI/UX designers
- Programming experts specific to the selected technology stack
- QA engineers
Discovery Workshop is a project initiation process to shape up the client ideas, engineer business requirements to build an architecture for taking a business idea into software development in less time. It helps the clients to analyse, identify, and present information on core vision, industry problems, strategic analysis, niche targets, project scope, etc.
Discovery Workshop is important for a hired development team to explore the subject area and business flow. It helps to identify bottlenecks and present relevant solutions. Discovery phase mainly aids to organize the clutter effectively with gathered information for creating a roadmap of the project.
The Objective of Discovery Workshop
The purpose of the discovery is not only to define and understand project requirements, but also to ensure how clients would like things to work in the future, and how we can help facilitate that. This will help software development services providers to deliver a robust, unique and out-of-the-box solution with stunning UI/UX design using the most advanced technologies.
In short, discovery process is done for the following two reasons:
- It allows the entire team to get a complete understanding of our client’s business, vision and goals.
- It allows the development team to assume and research any aspect that they might feel different, and give suggestions or raise questions.
Why Should Clients Go For Discovery Workshop Without Fail?
Let me give you an example to understand the thing in the easiest way.
Imagine yourself as a client looking to possess your mobile application developed. After checking out a short time , you agree contractual terms with one esteemed software development company. Given the very fact that you simply have already got an honest idea of what your app should appear as if and the way it might work, you merely ignore the project discovery workshop thanks to tight deadlines, time and money constraints. So you finally plan to handover the specifications document to the technical team and set a selected deadline for the delivery and merchandise launch.
In this case, the software development team wouldn’t have any longer queries and starts a mobile app design and development process to deliver the merchandise well within time. Those few weeks or months pass quickly and you finally have a shocking mobile app ready. you create the mobile app go live and await the primary new visitors with high anticipation and excitement levels.
After a few months, statistics and analysis derive that your app users aren’t enjoying your beautifully designed app and conversion is way far away from your expectations. This leads to a situation where you have already spent most or all of your capital in app development and now don’t have enough money to develop it further thanks to failed ROI. This would be the instant once you tell yourself : “Something went wrong badly.”
Discovery Workshop Summarized for Businesses
The little time and money spent after a discovery workshop will be a huge favour you would do on yourself, once you realise its benefits on a longer run. Discovery Workshop is essential for any project related to website development or mobile app development process, as it offers to:
- Make accurate decisions based on evidence instead of assumptions
- Get accurate estimates through better understanding of project scope and goals
- Ensure a high return on investment on a long-term
- Craft and create every pixel and design by keeping users to the core for better UX
- Save time & money by eliminating the need of making iteration at the end
- Consultation with industry experts helps to gain better insights about the overall development process
Are you looking to develop a software app and want to know more about Discovery Workshop in order to avoid the project failures? Contact our experts to know more and book a discovery workshop.
Conclusion
As a software development brand, having a product discovery workshop with your client will help in two ways. Your team will understand what the client wants to achieve with the product, and the client will be made aware of the technical factors required to make his dreams a success.
A UX discovery workshop helps save time and money by eliminating misunderstandings in the development stage so that all further stages are error-free.
FAQs on Product Discovery Workshop
What is a Discovery Workshop?
A discovery workshop is a conversation between the business planners and the technical team to collaborate and agree on the required behavior of an app or a website for an upgraded user experience.
What is the objective of a discovery workshop?
The objective is to:
- Define and understand the requirements of the project
- Ensure how the clients want things to work
- Allows the development team to understand the client’s vision, mission, and goals
- Provides the development team with ideas to research and give suggestions at the planning stage itself
How do you plan a discovery workshop?
You plan a discovery workshop with:
- Predefined goals and outputs from the workshop
- Selecting the right workshop participants
- Gather material and research topics for the meeting
- Plan the schedule
Why should clients go for a discovery workshop?
Clients should go for a design Discovery Workshop because:
- You can let the development team know exactly what you want
- You plan out the details and understand where issues may arise
- Errors are minimized as everyone is on the same page from day 1
- No wastage of time or money
What are the key results of a discovery workshop?
The four key results from a successful discovery workshop are:
- Value-Driven Pyramid
- Value-Driven Backlog
- Initial Planning
- Listing of crucial assumptions and ballpark estimates