Discovery

Uncovering user needs.

Discovery overview

Aim

Ensure that your project has all of the bases covered and is well positioned for subsequent design, define and build phases. Identify the overarching needs of your organisation and the needs of your users to ensure the right solution is delivered. The aim of the Discovery phase is to ensure that the whole team can clearly articulate what success looks like.

Approach

A Discovery phase at the inception of the project includes workshops with key stakeholders.  Combined with user research the collated information will uncover what needs to be delivered for the project to be successful. Further, this information will be used to guide and inform the team through the later  project phases including the Design & Build works.

Outcome

A project roadmap which gives the greatest chance of success for the project, addressing and anticipating user needs.

The discovery process

The discovery process is vital for the success of a project. 

Discovery involves several processes:

  • Identifying the overarching business goals. This will involve key stakeholders and will lead to an understanding of where the current project fits into the strategy and plans of the organisation
  • Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the current state
  • Conducting user research to define personas and understand priority user needs and tasks.
  • Identifying the objectives of the project
  • Documentation of the key deliverables and project requirements

 

Frequently asked questions

Discovery uncovers business goals and user needs before design or development starts, through stakeholder interviews, user research, content and technical audits, so that scope, cost and platform decisions (like GovCMS SaaS vs PaaS) are based on evidence rather than assumption. Skipping it tends to surface the same questions later, at higher cost, mid-build.

This scales with project complexity; a straightforward content site might need a short, focused discovery, while a large-scale transformation with multiple data sources and stakeholder groups (of the kind involving extensive discovery and content modelling work) can run considerably longer. The right length is set by how many unknowns genuinely exist, not a fixed template.

Typically a clear articulation of user needs and business goals, a recommended approach (platform, information architecture direction, integration requirements), and enough detail to scope the build phase with confidence — discovery should de-risk the decisions that are expensive to get wrong later, particularly platform and content-model choices.

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