What is a discovery
It’s the first phase of the service design and delivery process. You can think of as being a bit like a scoping phase. It’s about:
- understanding the problem that needs to solved before you commit to building a service, and
- learning about your users and what they want to do, what constraints you may be facing and the opportunities to improve how things are delivered today.
Why do a discovery
It will help you
- work out whether you want to go ahead with the next stage of your project (often known as the Alpha phase).
- have a greater understanding of your users (e.g. citizens, businesses, staff, visitors etc.) – their needs, tasks, motivations and goals.
- shape how you design and develop the product or service
- lower the risk of delivering projects that aren’t fit for purpose and therefore ensures we are spending taxpayer’s money in the best way.
- design better services based on what users need
How to get started
These are some of the things to think about when preparing and running a Discovery. Typically, it is 3-8 weeks long but of course will vary depending on the project and how familiar with doing these. You can find more detailed guidance on this in the links below as well as in our section on user research
- Check your budget and what is available
- Bring together your discovery team – these are people that have the skills and capacity to run the discovery (see our section on user research)
- Know who is responsible for making decisions
- Define the scope and set a goal for your discovery and set some metrics for success
- It’s often helpful to set out the problems that you already know and turn these into ‘How might we… statements
- Find out who the users are and what they need (see our section on how to do user research)
- Understand the environment and any constraints – for example there may be technology, legal, policies and strategies, existing services, financial constraints
- Analyse the findings and evidence and where possible make this visible and accessible for further use
- Work in the open – share your thinking and findings widely e.g. through show and tells with your colleagues, lunch and learn sessions, externally through blog posts
- Evaluate and prioritise options and recommendations for what to do next ahead of moving to the next phase
Who’s on the team?
Typical roles will often include a delivery manager, user researcher and service designer
Further reading and guidance https://dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/07/31/how-to-run-a-discovery-for-any-project-not-just-digital-ones/
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile-delivery/how-the-discovery-phase-works