The digital project discovery phase is an essential tool for businesses who are looking to build a successful online presence. It is the first step to understanding the needs of your customers, what they expect from your digital project, and how you can best meet those expectations. By conducting a thorough discovery phase, you can identify potential risks and challenges, create an actionable plan that meets your goals, and ensure that your project is well-positioned for success. With the right approach, you can use the discovery phase to create a comprehensive strategy that will help you achieve your desired outcomes. With the digital project discovery phase, you can take the first step towards building a successful online presence, and ensure that your business is set up for success.

Creating anything is hard and a digital product is no exception. There will be countless unknowns and ups and downs during the course of creating a new digital product. This is why a Discovery Phase is an integral part of the project lifecycle. It bridges the gap between a concept and its realisation and defines success. A discovery phase is an opportunity for the digital team to get to understand the project better and understand the underlying factors to be considered and managed. It allows both the client and the team to go for a test drive before committing to dig in with each other on a project.

The purpose of a discovery phase is to provide mutual context and clarity on several key aspects of a project: vision, current state, dependencies, risks, communication and collaboration, alignment and unknowns. A discovery phase is a planning stage during project initiation, when team members gather information about the project, set up budget and form precise project goals. It also helps to build the customer journey map that'll show the entire path of a user's interaction with the product. Plus, it can help create a value proposition, which is the value you promise to deliver to customers post-purchase. 

An initial discovery phase is about risk mitigation. It helps set the stage for a better project and, in the end, a better product. AWH, a digital product creator, encourages any client embarking on a new digital product project to be open to initially engaging with discovery phase as there is great value in doing it. 

The ultimate goal of a discovery phase is to help ensure the smoothest journey possible as the engagement and the work get increasingly more challenging as the project and product evolve. This is one of the reasons why we havetwo guiding principles:

1) Always work in the best interest of the client and

2) Always work in the best interest of the product. An initial discovery phase reflects and honours both of these principles. 

When done correctly, a discovery phase can help set the stage for a successful digital project. It helps create a better understanding of the project and its goals, as well as uncover and address potential risks. It can also provide valuable deliverables such as a client current state definition document, a client desired future document, a gap analysis defining the gap between a client’s current and future state, and an initial roadmap of future project phases and milestones.