Discovery phase: your software development plan

Your Benefits

This service brings you a lot of added value if you are:

• The owner of a medium-sized company
• At middle management level of a large company or corporation

What you can expect:

• We'll guide you through the process of analyzing your requirements, prioritizing, and conceptualizing a software solution best suited to the challenges you're facing.
• You will get a concrete development plan which includes everything needed to implement the software solution.

Why book a discovery phase?

• Avoid mistakes: Through good preparation and planning, mistakes during implementation can be avoided.
• Save cash burn: Save cash burn: The later in the process, mistakes happen, the more expensive they are. If you have something wrong on paper, it doesn't cost much, but if you've technically implemented it incorrectly, things start to get expensive.
• Gain clarity: we'll help you clarify your requirements and priorities, enabling you to set the project's scope.
• Set concrete goals: Visualizations create a picture of how the solution will look and function — avoiding unpleasant surprises in the aftermath.

What you get:

• Our goal is for you to walk away with a detailed, customized software solution development plan that can be implemented.

What can I expect in the discovery phase?

So we can hit the ground running, a certain amount of preparation is necessary on our side and yours.

Questions you should answer before we get started:

• What's your project about?
• What challenges are you facing?
• What do you want to achieve in detail by overcoming the challenges?
• What are your general goals? What are explicitly not your goals?
• Who are the current and future users?
• What does the workflow look like in detail right now? What should it look like in the future?
• Are there already documents, Excel spreadsheets, or other applications that support your process?
• Are there any other preliminary considerations you would like to tell us about?
• What ecosystem does this solution fit into? (existing applications, integration with existing systems, physical paper filing, etc.)

Set project requirements & framework

In this first phase, we'll gather as much information as possible about your planned project. To do so, we'll discuss the answers to your questions above. That way, we can all get on common ground.

This is also a great time to talk about any existing ideas and any challenges or technical requirements that need to be considered.

Benefits

• The better we get to know your project, the more productive and effective the following phases will be — in the end, you and your project will benefit from it.
• We truly understand the challenges you're facing that need solving.
• We have an idea of what your previous experience has been and what risks we need to take into consideration.

Services & Deliverables

• A project description that outlines your planned project and describes the problems, goals, and challenges.
• A pre-mortem that indicates the risks of your project with your previous experiences and considerations.

Analysis

Now it's time to get analytical. In this phase of the discovery, we will take a deep dive into your company and project, clarify any open questions, and discuss specific requirements.

Benefits

• We'll sharpen and deepen our shared understanding and our everyday language.
• We'll find out in detail what your workflow and processes look like today and what technical framework conditions exist.
• We'll set the requirements necessary to map this workflow.
• We know who the users are and how they are doing when working with the upcoming solution.

Services & Deliverables

• One or two appointments or workshops in which we delve deeper into the planned project with a service blueprint or a user journey map helps us work out details and requirements.
• All results are documented and processed as they are made available.
• The project description is expanded to include the requirements.

Prioritizing & setting the scope

Projects can quickly become very big, and often numerous ideas come up as soon as you start to work in-depth on a topic. You will need to prioritize and define the scope to keep your project focused and to implement the results quickly. This does not mean that there isn't room for all your ideas, but we need to agree on the scope of the challenge at hand.

Benefits

• Formulating jobs to be done helps pin down the desired outcomes in a more precise way.
• Prioritizing helps to focus on the most important challenge.
• Setting the scope gives an insight into what the software solution will be able to do in a first version and ensures that it can be used quickly.

Services & Deliverables

• One to two calls or workshops in which we nail the jobs to be done and prioritize them using opportunity scoring.
• Following prioritization, we will agree on the scope of the first version.
• The planned first version (MVP) is described in the project description.

Software Design

In the design phase, all the insights gained are used to create a reduced graphical representation (wireflows) of the application's first version (to be developed in the future).

Benefits

• Wireflows depict the future workflow and how individual tasks can be carried out.
• Because you can have up to two feedback rounds, we can adapt processes that are not 100% working for you and can adjust them to your needs.
• You should now have an exact idea of how your future solution will look and how it will help you solve the problem or achieve your goal.

Services & Deliverables

• Wireflows including presentation
• Up to two feedback rounds

Sounds promising?

Christian Hubinger

Contact us to book a free first consult with Project Owner Kerstin and learn more about the discovery phase.

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