{"head":{"title":"How to Plan a Discovery Phase for a Software Project","description":"A discovery phase turns an idea into an agreed scope, a clickable prototype and an estimate. Built by OceanLab, an enterprise software engineering studio.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/questions/how-to-plan-a-discovery-phase"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Questions","path":"/questions"},{"name":"How do I plan a discovery phase?","path":"/questions/how-to-plan-a-discovery-phase"}],"question":"How do I plan a discovery phase?","answer":["Plan it around the decisions you need to make: who the users are, which workflows matter, what the system must connect to, which rules apply, and what is in the first release. End it with concrete outputs, usually a ",{"href":"/glossary/clickable-prototype","text":"clickable prototype"},", a prioritised scope and an estimate you can act on."],"sections":[{"heading":"What to cover","body":[],"bullets":[["Goals and how success will be measured."],["Users, their key tasks and the current way they do them."],["The main workflows, step by step, including the awkward cases."],["Integrations, data sources and who owns them."],["Compliance, security and accessibility requirements."],["Technical risks worth a small spike, such as AI accuracy or a hard integration."],["What goes into the first release and what waits."]]},{"heading":"Who to involve","body":[["A decision-maker who can settle scope, people who do the work today, someone who knows the existing systems, and on the vendor side a designer, an engineer and a project lead. Short, focused workshops beat long meetings."]],"bullets":[]},{"heading":"What you should have at the end","body":[["A clickable prototype of the key flows, a prioritised list of features with ",{"href":"/glossary/acceptance-criteria","text":"acceptance criteria"},", an architecture outline, known risks and an estimate or a milestone plan. At OceanLab the clickable prototype is the step before production on every build."]],"bullets":[]}],"faqs":[{"question":"Is discovery worth paying for?","answer":"Usually. It is much cheaper to change a prototype than working software, and the estimate that follows is far more reliable."},{"question":"Can we skip discovery for a small project?","answer":"You can shorten it, not skip it. Even a small project needs agreed scope and acceptance criteria."},{"question":"Do we own the discovery outputs?","answer":"You should. Make sure the contract says so, so you can take them to any team."}],"terms":[{"href":"/glossary/clickable-prototype","label":"clickable prototype"},{"href":"/glossary/mvp","label":"MVP"},{"href":"/glossary/fixed-price","label":"fixed-price contract"}],"tools":[{"href":"/tools/project-brief-template","label":"Project brief template","detail":"Free tool"}],"links":[{"href":"/glossary/discovery-phase","label":"Discovery phase","detail":"Glossary"},{"href":"/glossary/user-story","label":"User story","detail":"Glossary"},{"href":"/glossary/backlog","label":"Backlog","detail":"Glossary"}],"related":[{"href":"/questions/what-is-a-clickable-prototype-for","label":"What is a clickable prototype for?","detail":"Question"},{"href":"/questions/how-to-write-a-software-rfp","label":"How do I write a software RFP?","detail":"Question"},{"href":"/questions/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-an-app","label":"How long does it take to build an app?","detail":"Question"},{"href":"/compare/ai-agent-vs-workflow-automation","label":"AI agent vs workflow automation","detail":"Comparison"},{"href":"/compare/rag-vs-fine-tuning","label":"RAG vs fine-tuning","detail":"Comparison"},{"href":"/glossary","label":"Glossary","detail":"Every term, in plain words."}],"sources":[],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}