How Discovery Workshop Helps Clients in Software Development?

The process of software development has evolved with time. Gone are the days where only a great idea and an empty space to set up a development team was needed. Technology advancement, innovations, adoption across various industries, and demand from the customers have resulted in software development being a strategic, strict, complex process.

Robust and sound evaluation, appealing design, disciplined yet strict planning is needed to build a custom software solution. Today, top software development companies and service providers propose their clients to go for a discovery workshop before the project kick-off.

Let us see what are the benefits of a discovery workshop for clients who are looking to build great software products. That also by outsourcing their software development requirements to an onshore or offshore development center.

Understand Discovery Workshop

In the simplest forms, the discovery workshop is kind of a virtual workshop between the two parties, the client (team) who is looking to build a software, and the Project Team who is about to build that software for the client.

In other words, it is the pre-development stage of gathering to discuss and share ideas about the business, project, product to be built, expectations from the product, clients, and team, etc.

The project team consists of various resources which are needed for design, ideation, programming, project management, quality checks, etc.

Why Discovery Workshop Must Be Considered by Every Client?

Umm, well. Let us make it a bit interactive, this blog thing.

Think of yourself as a client! You are having a great idea to start a new business and looking to build a fantastic software application, website development or mobile app development, or maybe both. Or it may be the case that you want to go for the new software development for your existing business. You have agreed with the contract terms with the chosen offshore software development company.

Let’s assume that you have a good understanding of what you application would look like and also about what to expect from the app itself once released in the market. But let’s say you ignore the discovery phase due to tight launch deadlines and not willing to spend time, effort, and money on that. You just want your software app to be developed and launched in the quickest time possible. Finally, you hand over the project team a document giving approval to product features and specifications and set a deadline for milestones if any, and the app launch.

Whatever queries the project team may have will be limited as they will start working on the design and development to deliver the product as per your approval. Now, the app, let’s say, is delivered in time and you made it live.

After the first few months that users are downloading the app but the majority of them are going away after few uses here and there. Reviews are also getting deteriorated day by day. All of a sudden, you think about the huge sum of money you have invested in this project and now you may have to look elsewhere for the money to develop it further for resolving the issues.

Find yourself in a pickle? I think so. This is why spending a little bit of effort beforehand, in the discovery workshop, can help clients to avoid this scenario. Discovery Workshop increases the collaboration between the two teams and chances of success for any software app development project.

Discovery Workshop Nullifying 3 Main Problems for Clients

Many times clients would not opt to have a Discovery Workshop due to time and budget constraints. Then there would be some who may think: “It is not something really needed for my project requirements.”

For such clients, the example described earlier shows how much you and your project could lose by simply ignoring the discovery workshop in project initiation and pre-development stages.

1. Underestimating Project Implementation Costs

You should not assume that since your solution (app idea) seems straightforward, the development of it will also be the same. This is the reason behind the failure of many development projects that remain unfinished.

2. Launching a product in the market with less or no potential

Sometimes, having enough funds is not sufficient. Digital products and mobile apps usually suffer from a lack of users when the ideas are not validated upfront. The Discovery workshop helps us to visualize and specify your ideas to suggest a way to validate them via an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) or a Prototype.

3. Finding on Product not solving user needs

This is perhaps the most unwanted reason to fail. It would be a disaster if you find out post-development stage that your Android or iOS app or software is not solving the needs of end-users. Opting for a discovery Workshop will eliminate this possibility in the first place.

Discovery Workshop Helps for Efficient UI/UX Design

Discovery Workshop is designed to provide precise and detailed information that is fed to technical engineers to start an effective development process.

The UI/UX design team may have the biggest thinkers and though we have the best talents delivering outstanding designs week-in, week-out; we believe that clients are an equally important part of Discovery sessions to make an end product a success.

Key details are very important for the thinking and visualization process for the design team! If you don’t want key details to get lost in translation, you need to plan the process outright. It is to ensure that all the features you expect to be developed are covered in the product’s roadmap/ user journeys. This is achieved when there is a smooth transition of information between the design team and other project stakeholders.

Discovery Workshop is about “Designing Together”

This is where we craft our ideas into wonderful designs. The first representation of bringing your ideas into reality. Effective collaboration of Clients, Project analysts, UI/UX designers can help in the following ways:

• Clutter of ideas is organized efficiently to define critical system features
• Best way to build a complete feature product/ software listing that is understood by everyone
• Outlining system architecture design – the Blueprint of the Core
• Full fledge user journey derived through expertly crafted on-screen mockups
• An interactive set of UI/UX designs to visualize the end product
• Swift Prototype development
• Low-risk development of cost-effective launch-ready product

The main objective for UI/UX design team here would be to provide wireframes and functional layouts with attractive, interactive, and relevant designs that stick to the main objective of solving end-user needs.

Summing It Up For You…

The potential of your brilliant business app idea and execution of it are completely different. The whole undertaking can seem especially difficult if you have little to no experience implementing digital products.

We at IndiaNIC, an award-winning offshore development company, can help you to refine your idea in a way that allows you to take the first few steps into your project. This is where discovery workshops come into play.

Contact our experts to know about the methodology of our own crafted discovery workshop and why it is different from the others.