Signs it is time to revisit discovery workshops

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. A few signals that discovery workshops is due some attention.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• A few focused hours prevents months of wrong direction
• Get the decision-makers in the room, not just their proxies

What good looks like

End with written decisions, not a mood board. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

How to tell if yours is fine

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. 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 any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.