Unlocking Product Success: The Vital Role of the Discovery Phase

The discovery phase is a vital step in product development that can help increase your product success chances, reduce risks, improve the accuracy of your budget and time estimates, and optimize the development costs. In this article, we share details on how the software development discovery phase works and its benefits and highlight the discovery phase process, deliverables, team, and potential cost.  

A well-done groundwork is an essential aspect of success in any venture. You should create a detailed plan before laying the foundation and building a house. This rule also applies to product development. The phase that comes before the start of the software development project is called the discovery phase and is crucial to the success of any product. The discovery phase process aims to transform the idea of a product into a set of assets sufficient to start product development, thus increasing the odds of product development and market success. 

Some companies skip the discovery phase in a project, striving to launch the product on the market as early as possible. However, such an approach increases the risks of facing hidden complexities and technical blockers late in the process or delivering features with little value to the end-users. This, in turn, can lead to unexpected expenses, project inefficiencies, or scope creep, thus nullifying the hopes for a quick launch. 

We at Sigma Software have seen numerous examples of how the discovery phase helped our clients shape a better product vision and safeguard efficient product development and launch.  

What Does the Discovery Phase Mean? 

The discovery phase includes activities to comprehensively elaborate a product idea, covering four major aspects: Product, UI/UX, Technology, and Delivery. 

It is vital to understand the difference between Product Discovery and Iteration Zero; hence, those are two different and independent activities. Product Discovery refers to the definition of the product. In contrast, Iteration Zero refers to the set-up of detailed development requirements for the first few sprints and is a part of the development cycle. 

The discovery phase in software development is the bridge between the product idea and its technical implementation. It aims to increase the chances of product success, reduce uncertainty levels, mitigate potential risks, and align the stakeholders with one shared product vision. 

The Value Discovery Phase Brings  

The main benefit the product development discovery phase can bring to your company is that it helps you to: 

Shape the Product Vision 

The product vision developed within the scope of the discovery phase outlines the buying personas in detail and highlights jobs to be done. It also determines how your product will address the needs of your target audience and what features are needed to address these needs. 

This vision and the analysis performed through the process of shaping it enable your business to understand better the goals you want to achieve by creating the product, its potential, and future outlook.  

Align All Members Around a Shared Vision

The more general description of the future product you have, the more likely it is that each of your team members will assume something different under this concept. That is why it is necessary to thoroughly work out your idea, delving into the details to align all members around a shared vision and give them a clear understanding of what the future product should be like.  

Once the team members clearly understand the product concept, they can perform better on the assigned tasks, communicate more effectively, and move toward the intended goal faster. 

Quickly Validate Your Idea 

The product vision and interactive prototype developed during the product discovery phase can already be shown to potential users & investors, allowing you to get feedback and validate your idea before the actual development. This will enable you to test your product concept, adapt your vision to the end user’s needs, and start the fundraising process as early as possible. Moreover, it will help you reduce time to market (TTM) by bringing a refined vision into development.  

Plan Project Budget More Accurately 

According to Fortunly, 18% of companies fail due to cost overruns, and the product discovery phase can help you prevent that from happening. The discovery stage allows you to work out all the essential aspects with the stakeholders even before the development begins. It will enable you to get a detailed scope of the project that can be easily estimated, thus avoiding the situation when it turns out that the product cost becomes significantly higher than initially planned because of hidden complexities or unexpected changes in the scope. 

Moreover, a clear and detailed product features set can help you optimize the budget by safeguarding that only the MVP's most viable features are included. When the product starts gaining market traction, all nice-to-have features can be added later. Thus, the discovery analysis performed at the beginning of the discovery phase will help you save money on further development and avoid numerous shortcomings and errors. 

Minimize Development Risks and Uncertainties 

Product concept analysis performed within the scope of the discovery phase process allows you to identify apparent risks and suggest ways to mitigate them, as well as reduce the likelihood of unforeseen problems and hidden complexities popping up during product development. 

This allows you to avoid the issues that may become merciless to any new product initiative, namely missed deadlines, postponed deployments, weak demand for offered product features, etc. 

Product Discovery Phase Steps 

The workflow for the product discovery phase may differ from organization to organization. However, the primary tasks of the discovery phase boil down to elaborating a detailed vision of the future solution covering four significant aspects: Product, UI/UX, Technology/Engineering, and Delivery. All those tasks are aimed at: 

• Identifying major pain points and goals of the end-users and the ways the future solution will address those. 
• Shaping future solution scope and product backlog. 
• Elaborating your solution look and feel. 
• Envisioning the solution’s architecture, infrastructure, and technical stack. 
• Defining product delivery team roles and approaches to development and testing. 
• Creating the development project timeline and estimates (these can be high-level for the entire development cycle and more precise for the shorter period.) 
• Discovering risks, challenges, and mitigation strategies.  

The most typical product discovery activities include: 

Workshops With Stakeholders To Define Business Goals  

The first step involves a series of workshops with the CEO, business owner, or product owner. The primary purpose of these meetings is to grasp an idea of the product, identify business goals, define the pain points of the target audience and ways to solve them, and determine the potential project scope. During this step, we usually conduct interviews, gather necessary documentation, etc. 

Analysis of the Market, Target Audience, and Competitors 

Target audience and competitor analysis is a critical part of the discovery phase. It will help you select a niche, choose the right business model, and evaluate your perspectives. Market research enables us to define your future solution’s unique selling points and find out the advantages and disadvantages of your product. From conducting market surveys to analyzing similar projects created in the industry, this is where you set project expectations and make your product stand out. 

Wireframes, User and Information Diagrams, and Prototypes 

After we have analyzed the product idea with stakeholders and conducted the competitive analysis, we can work out the UX/UI concept, which usually includes three aspects: 

1. Wireframes represent a schematic preview of the future UI. It allows you to see how blocks and elements will be placed in the interface and help ensure that the UI will be intuitive and address user needs in the best possible way.
2. User and information flow diagrams represent the user's path while using your product. The diagrams are the fastest way to plan customer journey paths, visualize the information flow, and boost user experience.
3. An interactive prototype allows you to see how your solution looks and works. It mocks the app behavior and represents how your future product will work with the core use cases. An interactive prototype is an excellent solution for validating your future product’s UX with prospective users before doing actual development.

Preparing Detailed Requirements and Feature Set 

Another critical aspect of the discovery process is to define the features that would help your end-users address their needs in the best possible way and additional requirements you might have. At this stage, it’s essential to document product requirements, including functional and non-functional ones. 

The discovery phase helps you prioritize critical features, eliminate unnecessary ones, and develop ways to improve your idea. We recommend concentrating on core features that will help validate your significant assumptions, acquire initial users as soon as possible, and reflect what your end-users want to see in the product.  

Building a Product Vision and Roadmap 

At this point, we can draw up a detailed product vision that describes the product we want to create and the roadmap explaining how this product will evolve to reach the state envisioned. It allows you to define the product development timeline and determine what to include in the MVP. 

This roadmap will highlight the diverse stages of the project and the main deliverables and sketch the critical project milestones. You can then develop a comprehensive dashboard that makes it easy for all members engaged in the project to follow the roadmap and stay on track with the project’s vision. 

Architecture Vision 

The next step is to choose the technical stack, the overall product architecture and infrastructure, the necessary structural elements, and their internal relationships. During this stage, it is essential to specify the technologies, frameworks, and tools on which the product will be based. 

Moreover, it is a good idea to highlight significant areas that need additional focus in implementation and create a technical product model based on what has been identified as the most optimal architecture design.  

Estimating Efforts, Timeline, and the Team Needed To Develop the Product 

Another essential step in the product discovery phase is the in-depth budget estimation and the creating of a comprehensive timeline. Given the high likelihood of changing and adapting product requirements based on market feedback, focusing more on the MVP scope implementation makes sense, keeping the long-term development budget at the ballpark level. 

In our practice, we recommend conducting a precise effort and cost estimation for 3-6 months of solution development as well as a rough effort and cost estimation for foreseen solution development. This will allow you to plan the budget, look for investments for short-term growth, and potentially understand what the launch of the product will cost in the long term. 

Based on this assessment, the team's composition is planned, and a timeline for 3-6 months of development is formed. 

Discovery Phase Deliverables  

A set of deliverables may differ depending on your business needs, product complexity, industry, etc. Whether you do it yourself or involve an outsourcing company, it is always a good idea to ensure that the deliverables you get as the discovery phase output include the artifacts covering the Product, UI/UX, Technology, and Delivery aspects of your future solution. The set of deliverables we typically provide includes:  

• Product documentation incorporating personas description, user roles and permissions registry, product roadmap, features list, and prioritized backlog. 
• UX / UI documentation, including wireframes, design concepts, mock-ups, user flow, and information architecture. 
• Engineering/Technology documentation uniting architecture vision, infrastructure design document, technology stack recommendation, and data architecture diagrams. 
• Delivery documentation encompassing the WBS, effort, and cost estimation, high-level delivery timeline, product development team composition, and risk and assumption register. 

Discovery Phase Development Team and Their Roles 

Product discovery is a complex initiative that covers many different aspects of product development and can hardly be accomplished just by one business analyst who would collect and documents the requirements. It is important to involve a team combining different and diverse expertise. Other Technical Experts can also be interested in the discovery phase if their experience is needed (for example, information security expert, data engineer, AI/ML expert, test automation expert, etc). 

The number of people on the discovery team may vary according to the product's size, complexity, and objectives. Let’s talk about the few significant roles that need to be involved in the discovery phase: 

Product Manager 

The product manager drives the product vision, ensures that the product supports the company’s overall strategy and goals and efficiently addresses the end-users needs. The product manager is in charge of: 

• Defining business goals for the product.
• Researching users, market, and competition. 
• Determining pain points and user needs. 
• Creating the vision, strategy, and roadmap. 
• Identification of functional and non-functional requirements. 
• Scoping the MVP.  

Project Manager 

The project manager coordinates the progress of the discovery phase project, manages and consolidates deliverables, and participates in elaborating the delivery aspect of the discovery itself. The project manager is responsible for: 

• Discovery project management, coordination, and reporting. 
• Product development planning, team composition, and WBS (work breakdown structure.) 
• Participation in the development cost estimation. 
• Working on risk analysis and mitigation strategies. 

Software Architect  

A software architect is a specialist who envisions how the product will be implemented in terms of technology. His responsibilities include: 

• Analysis of requirements from a technological perspective. 
• Creating a technology strategy and recommending an optimal technology stack. 
• Develop an architectural vision and infrastructure vision (together with DevOps specialists.) 
• Advice on technical feasibility and development guidelines. 

UI/UX Designer 

A UI/UX designer has two areas of responsibility – research and design. On one side, they participate in studying the needs of users. On the other side, they design an intuitive interface to make your product as attractive as possible. UX/UI designer is responsible for: 

• Analysis of the target audience and conducting UX research. 
• Creating wireframes, user and information diagrams, and design concepts. 
• Creating interactive prototypes. 

Test Engineer 

The test engineer works out the strategies and criteria that will be used to validate that the developed solution is compliant with the defined business goals and requirements. The test engineer is in charge of the overall test strategy and test plan for MVP. 

The Duration and Cost of the Discovery Phase  

The discovery phase can last from 2 to 6 weeks, depending on the complexity of the project and the depth of analysis. Either way, working through all four aspects (Product idea, UX/UI design, Technology, and Delivery) to launch a successful product is essential. 

We recommend running a complete discovery analysis to ensure everything is ready for product development. However, if you have already covered some aspects (e.g., Product and UX) and are 100% sure those are done in full, you can exclude those from the discovery phase and focus on Technology and Delivery ones. 

In general, the Technical and Delivery discovery takes 2 to 4 weeks, depending on the depth of the study. It allows you to get architecture and infrastructure visions, tech stack, and tech excellence recommendations, as well as 90% precise estimates for two sprints in the fundamental discovery analysis and eight sprints in the deep discovery phase. The entire product discovery (covering all four aspects) usually takes 4 to 6 weeks, depending on the discovery depth. 

As a concern, the cost can vary significantly from provider to provider and depends on the project's complexity, the form of cooperation, the supplier’s area of responsibility, and the pricing model. 

Final Thoughts 

Over the years of supporting start-ups and enterprises with product development services, we have learned that success is not only about the idea behind the product but also its proper implementation. Even though our clients work in different business verticals and have different scales, processes, and goals, the product discovery phase has proven to be an effective method that helps predictably develop a product. 

It makes sense to invest some time and budget into product discovery and lay a solid foundation for sustainable business operations in the future.