Play: How To Run A Discovery

When to run the play

This is done during the discovery & define phase. There are multiple sessions required to complete it in full.

Why run the play

To ensure we use the most effective technology, production methods, development tools and processes to achieve the goals of the project BEFORE we actually build anything.

How to run the play

Step 1 — Assign each ‘unknown’ a stream and a role

Try and work out your big unknowns.

Where will this live and how will it be built?
What journey will the user take?
What will this experience look like?

Then create a stream for each of your biggest unknowns and assign people to them.

Technical Approach — Tech Lead
User Journeys — UX Designer
Look and Feel — UI Designer

Step 2— Get The Work Seen

If you’re running a Discovery then the problem you’re trying to solve is complex and you’ll need plenty of oversight and approvals from different camps. The best way to get this is to set up structured demos with the various parties.

Team Demo — set them up more regularly than you think you need, and scale them back as you see fit.

Big Demo — set these up every week in a Discovery for senior stakeholders in your business. You are using their brains to make them work better. They are a resource to you

Client Demo — set up a weekly client demo where you show them the work as it progresses and get their feedback.

Step 3 — Ensure meetings happen

There are a number of critical meetings to get started on straight away. In fact, if you can set the meetings up early, to happen on day 1 of Discovery, the better.

⭐ Technical Meetings⭐
This one is super important and should be considered first. Before the design can even really begin, you need to know where and how you are building this thing. This means your technical lead needs to chat with their technical leads as soon as possible.

For example, if it turns out you’ve got to build in a client environment with Adobe Experience Manager as a technical solution, your whole design process will revolve around what is possible in that solution, and what is not.

Success Measurement
For the good of the project you’ll need to run a workshop where you put metrics of success to the project objectives, and then communicate that out. A workshop template on how to do this is coming soon.

Analytics Meetings
Find out who you need to connect with, to ensure that any analytics requirements are defined nice and early.

Step 4— Get a deck set up to work into

You’re going to need to be presenting your work throughout Discovery. So it makes sense to get a deck set up that will allow you to do this in a central place. It’s also valuable because you’ve got multiple streams, so you need to get a view of what it looks like when you put those outputs altogether.

1. Create a Method Statement deck with a structure that reflects the team roles

2. Inside the deck give each team member their individual challenge:

Step 5— Production Strategy

Considering the nature of the client, the type of thing we’re building and releasing, decisions need to be made about what tactics we’re going to use to execute. A Production strategy includes methods that cover Production, Design and Development

• The Producer should produce a list of considerations for The Technical Lead, Design Lead, and Senior Management to be able to digest
• The Producer should schedule a 🗣 session to agree on this between the group
• Once a strategy has been ✅ agreed it needs to be added to a Method Statement to be agreed upon by the client

Production Methodologies:

• Waterfall
• Agile
• Scrum
• Sprint based delivery
• Profit first: watertight scope, and low scale version of features
• Progressive Enhancement: a design for the most accessible experience, then decide what to scale up to
• Graceful Degradation: a design for the best experience, then decide what to fall-back to
• Mobile First: discuss, demo and deliver mobile before any other experience

Sprint Model example from a project:

Step 6— Define Testing Approach

Once we understand more detail about the epics and their technical requirements, we can make a decision about how we test what we’re building.

1. Schedule a 🗣 session with the Technical Lead, Design Lead and Technical Director
2. ✅ Decide on the best testing approach considering the audience, output, client and technology

Known approaches so far:

• In-house testing;

Producer tests using Browserstack and reports bugs into Github using our ticket template

• The out-house standard exploratory approach

For this approach, an agency creates a high-level plan to ensure the test effort is structured while allowing the test analysts to use their experience and expertise to adapt the test approach based on the build under test. The testers can focus on typical journeys that you know users will follow as well as a test for edge cases and negative scenarios that you may not be expecting.

• The out-house scripted approach

Specialist testing approach for products as it’s possible to reuse the test cases to regression test any new releases or feature updates. It’s also great to have a test script to show the areas that have been covered during testing. On top of having a test script that the test analysts will follow during the test effort, the approach also includes the first phase of exploratory testing (mentioned above), which guarantee a higher test coverage.

Step 7— Make Sure The Work ‘Works’

Once the production methodology and testing approach has been agreed then we can begin breaking down the project into smaller parts, to try and scope the solution into the budget we have.

Part 1: Break Down Project into Epics

1. Schedule a 🗣 session with the Heads of Dpt and the Team
2. Break down the epics of work, then assign smaller pieces of those epics to skillsets in the team
3. Assign milestones to each sprint that correctly achieve the project objectives
4. Define any key meetings that are needed during each sprint
5. List out any unknowns that need to be discovered

Part 2: Check the Solution Fits Into The Budget

Once the epics have been set, you can use the Scoping Tool to do a rough sizing of what is being suggested in Discovery, and sense checks it against the production budget.

Scoping Tool