The IT market in Poland is currently worth more than 6 billion dollars and is growing by about 6% per year. Such growth brings with it significant competitiveness of the industry, so the success of individual companies is largely determined by the ability to find appropriate business advantages. In this text, I will try to present one of the methods to achieve such an advantage — it is a workshop tool, known as a discovery session.
Who needs it?
First of all, it is worth answering the question of who is the main beneficiary of such an approach. Well, the end user, for sure, because an analytical and critical approach to the assumptions and business models of the investor has a better chance of translating into benefits for the target consumer. But this approach brings additional benefits for the investor and the supplier, i.e. in this case the software house. The possibility of verifying the first assumptions and business concepts, even before the start of the project, as well as knowing the prospect of a potential client, on the one hand, gives the opportunity to change the approach to the investment adequately in advance, and on the other hand, allows the chosen supplier (or the one who is just trying to obtain a contract) to create the image of a responsible and a creative business partner.
A similar role at the beginning of any major project is played by BI experts on the supplier side, but their perspective is slightly different — they are tasked with translating the customer's business requirements into specific functionalities that can be implemented in the chosen technology. The task of UX designers, carrying out the discovery session workshop, is in turn to a broader view of the entire context of application use and the possibilities it will offer to the end user.
Where to start?
Discovery session is aimed at several tasks, but of the main ones it is worth mentioning first of all:
- Aligning the level of knowledge with the customer — more than 10 years of experience in cooperation with clients shows that this is crucial to achieve the desired results later, and also to make the Client feel throughout the project implementation process that everyone is moving in the same direction; in other words, this stage eliminates any underdiscussion at the start. In addition, such a session at the beginning of the project allows you to know all the limitations of the project on the investor's side, which otherwise could not be articulated before the start of the project.
- Clarify the definition of the target group — regardless of whether the new project is an innovative start-up (although in this case this stage is a real must have) or the project concerns the redesign of the current service.
- Verification of business and functional assumptions in the context of responding to real user needs — a business that meets the real expectations of its target group has immeasurably greater chances of success and that is why it is so important to decide at the very beginning which assumptions are potentially desirable and which may result from the investor's cognitive errors
- Risk management — on paper most ideas seem to make sense and in excel all amounts add up, of course, in plus, but only their collision with the actual state of competition, consumer needs and the current market situation gives knowledge and the opportunity to make rational business decisions. At the discovery session stage, it is possible to determine together with the client, among others, the scope of a safe MVP, which on the one hand will implement key business assumptions, and on the other hand will act as a kind of litmus paper, determining the correctness of the assumptions and business plans taken.
There is another goal that is sometimes forgotten in the context of the search for reasons for the realization of the discovery workshop and its benefits. It is, without a doubt, the desire to verify that all the people in the client's organization who are involved in the project perceive it in the same way. Sometimes it happens that the discovery workshop is the first place and opportunity to spark a lively discussion in the team on the client side, which can sometimes overturn all the original assumptions.
Achieving the aforementioned goals is possible in the case of adequate preparation for such a workshop, which also requires the participation of appropriate persons on the part of the investor. This group most often includes:
- Produkteigenaar — this can be a dedicated role or business owner; it is important that the seconded person has comprehensive knowledge of the business and its objectives, and is empowered to make strategic decisions
- Marketing Representative — such a person will be able to discuss the project from the point of view of long-term action plans and business goals in the context of differentiators in the market and brand communication
- Specialist in the field — when the project on the investor's side is complex and implies specialized solutions, an important role in the discovery workshop is a person who has answers related to the specialization of the project
- Future System Operators — when the designed solution will be managed by dedicated people on the investor's side, it is also worth listening to their opinion, because a well-designed system will increase the efficiency of the indicated people. Otherwise, the implementation of repetitive tasks in a system that is not intuitive for them may entail a financial loss.
Protip: a good complement to the discovery workshop is the inclusion of elements of the technology workshop, allowing, for example, to discuss the project with third-party investor suppliers; this allows to identify and eliminate potential problems of integration, selection and refinement of the best, from the point of view of objectives, technology.
How best?
Even before the pandemic, discovery workshops were usually carried out at the premises of customers (for their convenience) or at the premises of the supplier, because sometimes the customer prefers to contract the time of the whole team only for the workshop, without any distractors in the form of current work.
However, there is nothing to prevent such workshops from being carried out remotely, which at present is usually the only correct form. Workshops can be carried out using dedicated tools (Mural, Miro) or using publicly available instant messengers such as Zoom, Hangouts, Skype. However, it should be borne in mind that conducting workshops remotely is different from face-to-face implementation. Here are the differences to keep in mind:
- Online meetings should be much shorter than those conducted directly — even a full working day will work for a live customer meeting, but 4h is rather the upper limit for most customers in the case of a remote workshop
- The potential inability to observe the behavior and attitude of the client during the workshop means that the agenda of the meeting and the sets of exercises should be very carefully thought out and planned, because in such a version of the workshop there is extremely little space and time for improvisation.
Regardless of the form of the workshop meeting, it is worth remembering that the team on the client side does not have more than 5 people. Otherwise, it will be much more difficult to manage the discussion and the work of the team, and prolonged, multi-threaded discussions of the client can make it impossible to reach an unambiguous consensus.
When is it worth it?
As mentioned above, the discovery workshop should take place even before starting the project, as it forms a kind of foundation for the arrangements according to which the customer and supplier teams will work together. Practice shows that this type of workshop is great as a start for official cooperation, but it can be successfully used as a competitive advantage when investors are not yet decided on a specific supplier. Offering a discovery workshop (it should almost never be a free service) before starting cooperation with an investor also gives you the opportunity to learn about 3 key aspects of a potential project:
- In which position is the offer of a given supplier - if the client is not willing to spend 5%-10% of the planned budget to recognize the possibilities and risks of the project, such a supplier is usually not taken seriously
- Investor's budget — a similar situation, except that this time we check how seriously the client thinks about the project itself
- Substantive preparation — here, thanks to this approach, we can check how well the client is prepared to start the project in general. The reluctance to participate in such a workshop due to the lack of sufficient level of knowledge in the organization gives, in theory, 2 possibilities — to postpone the potential cooperation until the client accumulates the necessary knowledge (there are not many worse scenarios than the one in which the client wants, but does not know what) or to expand such a workshop and lay the foundations for the project together with the client. From my perspective, the second option is highly time-consuming and therefore financially inefficient, since the supplier will almost never know as much about the customer's business as he himself, ergo will not be able to be an equal partner (the exception here are sometimes start-ups).
In addition to the characteristics of the workshop mentioned above, it is also difficult to overestimate the direct benefit of offering such a design approach — a supplier who knows he needs to learn more is usually much more valued by the investor than the one who rather blindly estimates and assumes.
Is it worth it?
It is definitely worth it and even should be.
Summarizing all aspects of the realization of discovery workshops we can divide them into... groups depending on the perspective — customer and supplier:
- Customer Perspective
- Possibility of refining business assumptions in the context of the user — some ideas look good only on paper and it is worth having an outside person falsify them
- Collision of the knowledge of the investor team with expert and domain knowledge — the accident of these two areas can save a lot of time, money, and probably saved many businesses from missed investments
- Hierarchization and organization of activities according to the available budget and schedule of activities
- Acquaintance with the supplier's facilities and team, accelerating the implementation of the cooperation methodology and the principles of communication
- Vendor Perspective
- Better understanding of the client's business and its opportunities (and risks)
- Articulate project risks in advance and manage risk
- Compromise in the necessary areas (on the budget-timeline line)
- Ability to identify potential diverters in the project
- Establish a deeper relationship with the client and standardize the principles of cooperation with the client
In summary, it should be mentioned that the discovery workshop is a versatile tool whose role is not limited to determining the scope of the project, but is also applicable as a means of establishing deep business relationships and helps in project risk management.
Moreover, the customer's conviction of the added value of such a workshop shows not only the professionalism of the supplier, but also his commitment, which translates into a plus and can constitute additional “points” in the final choice of a given software house.
