By Russ Unger, Chief Experience Officer
Discovery is perhaps the most important aspect of any undertaking—not just in the world of products and solutions delivery. You wouldn’t, after all, purchase a vehicle without doing your homework by checking with friends and family who drive a similar or same brand, test driving the vehicle, and understanding some of the basics of on-going maintenance, right?
Likewise, you can be certain that the vehicle brand has done their homework to know as much as possible about their target customer and user of the vehicle, and its various features.
When making an informed decision about the right product or solution to build and implement, Discovery is critical to helping ensure you’ve performed the right due diligence and that your hypotheses have been validated. You’ll want to have a clear and documented understanding of what your key stakeholders and users want and need.
What is Discovery in the World of Products and Solutions?
Discovery is a short-term, investigative engagement utilized to gain clarity and deep understanding of the challenges in product and solutions development. It is the deep exploration of a problem space while validating hypotheses to ensure that your time and money are well-spent, and spent on the right type of engagement that meets the needs of your users while fulfilling your mission objectives.
The Discovery engagement creates a shared understanding and common definition of a problem space by surfacing the known–and unknown–challenges and blockers that exist.
Discovery at IntelliBridge Experience Studio starts with an interactive kickoff and customized approach from our human-centered FAST plays. These plays uncover the expertise of stakeholders and subject matter experts, as well as any expert external partners and are used to generate a clearly defined vision, hypothesis definition and clarity, and an actionable roadmap to success.
Our FAST (Frequently Accessed Solutions Toolkit) Plays guide us through a customized approach that uncovers the expertise of stakeholders and subject matter experts, your users, as well as any necessary external partners. The FAST plays are focused on generating the right outputs and artifacts that shape a clearly defined vision, hypothesis definition and clarity, and an actionable roadmap to success.
Depending upon the scale and duration of the Discovery engagement, IntelliBridge Experience Studio utilizes no-to-low code tools to rapidly prototype use cases and scenarios. Users can interact and engage with these prototypes and provide additional, detailed information to help assess the hypothesis.
What are the Benefits of Discovery?
Discovery is possibly the most important element of any investment in new products, services, solutions, or even changes in processes. In the absence of a sufficient Discovery effort, companies run the risk of relying on gut instincts and best guesses.
Discovery is the analysis and synthesis of all the information that can be learned about a hypothetical scenario (a new software solution will make engaging with citizens more efficient and reduce costs, a customized product can create operational efficiencies for managers and reduce burden on employees, etc.) that provides insight into a roadmap for effective delivery of the right product or solution.
In a typical 6-12 week engagement, the Discovery engagement can:
- Deliver meaningful due diligence that informs impactful decision-making toward investments in products and solutions which helps ensure you’re putting the right resources against them
- Capture critical intelligence and analysis from your stakeholders, SMEs, and users about their needs and expectations which helps ensure you’re meeting the needs of the people involved while also delivering against your mission
- Perform high-level system-readiness and technology assessments to ensure you have the information you need to make infrastructure adjustments and investments
- Validate hypotheses, while continually iterating as new information is received which helps ensure you’re focused on the right hypotheses and the right product or solution
- Provide a high-level roadmap that identifies clear next steps in the delivery of your products and solutions
- Identify tangible metrics that ensure you’re measuring the success of your products and solutions
The IntelliBridge Experience Studio delivers Discovery efforts that meet your needs and gives you the due diligence and confidence you require to make meaningful investments in products and solutions.
IntelliBridge’s Experience Studio has Experts in Discovery and Beyond
Discovery is a way to validate hypotheses, perform due diligence, and identify a roadmap for how to deliver your products and solutions. IntelliBridge’s Experience Studio is your expert team that will provide you with the analysis and insight to make the best decisions with your investments in products and solutions.
IntelliBridge has the in-house experts to provide full-scale delivery operations—from DevSecOps, Product Development, Data Science, User-Centered Design, Strategic Experience, and Digital Transformation. If you’re interested in learning more how we can solve your biggest challenges together, let’s talk.