A short guide to discovery workshops

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Everything we would tell a client about discovery workshops in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

Why it matters

A few focused hours prevents months of wrong direction. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

How to approach it

Get the decision-makers in the room, not just their proxies. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

Where it usually goes wrong

End with written decisions, not a mood board. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

How to tell if yours is fine

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about discovery workshops before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Get the decision-makers in the room, not just their proxies — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.