How to Run an Effective Project Discovery Meeting

What is a Discovery in a Project?

Discovery is the first phase of a project. In a normal project there is usually a break down of work which typically comprises of design, development, testing and launch phases. Discovery happens before any other phase starts.

Think of the construction of a house. The electrical, plumbing, interior building and exterior building of a house all need to happen. But before any of that happens we need to know what we’re actually building. That’s where the designs and drawings of the house come in. Every specification and requirement is defined in that phase. Think of discovery as that phase. Similarly, in agile projects the discovery phase is the requirements phase in which all information about the project is collected, gathered and analyzed. This helps outline the project’s goals and scope. This phase also determines the timeline, budget, and project plan for the next phase. Think of it as the ‘laying the groundwork’ part of the project.

During the phase one or many meetings will take place to have conversations with the client and speak about various different aspects with the goal to ultimately gather requirements. These requirements will form the basis of the next phase, which is usually either design or implementation.

What is a Discovery Meeting?

A project discovery meeting is a meeting with the client at the initial stages of project. All clients will have some idea of what they need but most of the time they aren’t exactly sure what. The purpose of the meeting is for the partnering organization to understand the business requirements and overall goals of the client.

This meeting is your first opportunity to meet with your client. It may also be a workshop or brainstorming type of meeting.

There is no set template for the meeting, rather it all depends on the needs of the client. This is the first time you will be having a conversation with them to openly discuss challenges and goals and your first opportunity to build the relationship. Essentially this is a key meeting because it sets the tone for the rest of the project. Coming out of the meeting you should really have an idea of what you need to achieve in the project from a high level.

Note, that this is not a project kickoff meeting. That is a separate meeting to introduce both teams and discuss why we are all here.

How to Prepare for the Session

You need an agenda for the meeting. You need to come prepared! If you don’t come prepared you won’t be able to drive the conversation forward. Remember this is the first time you will be hearing from the client about their needs and goals so doing your homework will go a long way. Set up an internal meeting with your team and put down everything that you know so far into a document.

Your Preparation Should Come in 4 Key Forms

• Prepare an Agenda
• Know how to effectively lead the conversations
• Choose the right people to be part of the session
• Prepare a list of the key questions

Ideally one person will run the session, but all of these people should attend:

• Product Owner or Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• Solution Architect or Technical Lead
• UX Designer
• Marketing Analyst

Designate one person to do most of the talking and drive the conversation.

The Agenda Should Cover These Things

1. Goals and objectives
2. Identifying responsibilities of the stakeholders
3. Design and User Experience
4. Technical Requirements
5. Non-Functional Requirements - Usability, performance, maintenance, security, scalability

Lastly document all the key questions you need answered in the meeting.

An effectively run discovery session is not only going to help your own decision making but also show the client you know what you’re talking about. If you turn up to the meeting with the wrong people you won’t get all the information you need.

Running the Meeting

Now that you’ve done your preparation comes the hart part of running the actual meeting. When it comes to the meeting, try and immediately create a relaxing atmosphere. You want your client to warm to you and be able to trust you so starting off with a few lighthearted jokes always break the ice. Projects always tend to go smoothly if the trust factor is established early on. Start off by running through the introductions on both sides and explain the responsibilities of people on your team.

Aside from that, be strategic in order to extract the best possible information from the participants. Allow everyone to be an active speaker during the discussion. Give them the opportunity to hear from them rather than one person dominating the discussion. This is an open forum and everyone is a decision maker.

Remember this meeting is mainly discussion and exploration. The aim is try to understand the clients expectations for the new product. Assign someone to do the note taking and capture all requirements from the verbal discussions.

Whether this is an in-person meeting or video call you will need to present your agenda. Screen share your agenda document and run through the list of questions and topics of discussion. Try and time box the meeting to an agreed time. Usually this is 2-4 hours but this really depends on the amount of work you are dealing with.

In terms of the subject area this what will need to be discussed:

Main Strategy Type Questions

General

Start off by asking what is the biggest problem we are trying to solve. What are the overall goals for this product? How will we ultimately measure and evaluate success? How do the business objectives align with this project?

Messaging

What will the key messaging to be communicated? What are the overarching messages we are trying to bring across?

UX Design

If there is a design element to the project you will need to find out what the pain points in the current design are (menus, navigation, hierarchy) and what would the client like to see in the final version. What differences in design would they like to see? Are there brand guidelines?

Marketing

Ask the client who the target audience is and why they would come to visit. From that your Marketing team can create user personas (or user journeys). A content strategy report and keyword research report will have to be created. Find out how analytics will be measured and what tools need to be used to capture them.

Content

How the content is written and who is responsible for this can be one of the biggest bottlenecks in a project. It’s key to develop a content management plan. Find out if the content will be migrated or re-written and who will own that piece.

Technical

Find out any special functionalities. Are there any integrations? Any hosting or environmental questions should be raised in this meeting.

Any data architecture or infrastructure changes from the current setup? Are there any different languages that need to be supported?

Only your team knows how design is going to be translated into development (implementation phase) so make sure you ask all necessary questions on how their vision is going to be implemented.

Governance

This part is often overlooked in the discovery meeting. Find out who the stakeholders are and how we’re going to manage the process.

These are just examples of what you may want to cover. Add whatever you feel is necessary to be discussed.

After going through your agenda ask the client if they have anything they wanted to cover themselves and hear what they have to say. End the meeting by informing the client of your next steps — an action plan, internal review of the discovery session, backlog of requirements — and tell them you’ll be in touch soon.

Next Steps in the Discovery Process

After you’ve successfully wrapped up the meeting it’s important to connect internally with your team to get an idea of how the meeting went. Does everyone understand the main problems trying to be solved and the clients main challenges? After that, a discovery task list must be created and each person should be assigned a task.

Start creating an action plan and start thinking about the next immediate deliverables based on the discovery task list.

Keep in mind that not everything will be determined in the discovery meeting. If you missed something that is fine, just be transparent with your client and tell them you missed something which you’d like confirmed. This is precisely why there is a discovery phase. Things can still be in motion for weeks before a decision is made on how to move forward and that’s okay.

Thank you for reading!

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