Disclaimer: After ART of stARTing you will get 4+ deliverables.

You already know what the discovery phase is and what discovery steps are. And now you are considering the possibility of ordering such a service for your future product or solution. The most important question: what will I get my hands on after 1 week of discovery phase (DPh)?

As a rule our clients get the following deliverables:

• Vision and scope;
• Estimation duration;
• Technical architecture;
• Clickable Prototype.

In each specific case, the team negotiates the details with the client and deliverables may differ slightly and the whole DPh process can be splitted in different parts. Now let’s take a closer look at each of the points.

Vision and scope

After the first week of the project discovery phase, our dream team (as a rule it is three professionals: Business Analytics + Senior Developer + UX/UI designer) prepares 3 deliverables in pdf and a prototype. The original document is a Vision and scope which includes in-depth analysis of the business context (background), business opportunities/goals and customer needs. In addition, we can identify potential business risks, scope of work and limitations.

Estimation duration

In this document, we calculate the estimated number of hours for the development and testing of each feature (minimum and maximum hours number). Thus, the client can plan the release time of the product, as well as change something in its configuration (remove more time-consuming elements, add something quick but useful ect).

With this calculation, it will be easier for our customer to monitor the development process after the discovery phase or check the workflow of its internal team.

Technical architecture

The technical architecture may be delivered in the form of a system architecture context diagram (the system as a whole, as well as its inputs and outputs from/to external factors), a system architecture model of the future product (shows the various architectural components and their influence on each other) or requirements gathering. Besides we describe in detail all system component definition and development environment. Our team will present an infrastructure configuration map for development, testing and production stages if any.

Prototype

Prototyping is the final element of the entire discovery phase. Depending on the future product , prototypes can be:

• Graphics solutions with low or high details;
• Static or interactive ones;
• Paper or digital prototypes;
• Layout or model etc.

In any case, it will be kind of a “reconnaissance in force”, a simplified version of the future product or solution that you can get your hands on, test it on real people.

Please note, that we recommend going through the discovery phase BEFORE starting the development process. There are cases when, after this stage, the client decides to radically change the concept or get down to business with even more enthusiasm because he receives results that greatly surprise him.