Working with an outsourced team can be a challenge. Different locations and time zones, sometimes even different cultures. You are where the business is, working hard to move things forward, while your hired team is elsewhere, building something that will hopefully one day become your product.

How can you make sure that your vision is reflected properly in the finished product? How to best lay the foundation for a productive transfer of knowledge between yourself and the team, especially right now when most companies are working remotely?

We always suggest—insist even—that our clients take part in discovery workshops, because we believe that the way you start your journey influences what happens later.

Up until recently, we’ve been advocates of conducting the Discovery Workshops on-site, but due to the current global situation and many teams all over the world working 100% remotely (ourselves included), we switched to organizing remote workshops, and with great success.

The Discovery Workshop is meant to unravel the truth about your business and its needs. We are not experts in your particular field—you are. And you will be our gateway to your business.

After conducting many such workshops myself, I know that getting to know each other as people and achieving alignment together ensures smooth cooperation in the future.

In this article, I will outline how we organize the Discovery Workshop at Monterail 100% remotely, what you can expect to get out of them, how to prepare, and why you shouldn’t skip them.

Well, let’s dive in.

The Workshop Step by Step

The journey begins the moment you contact us. One of our Account Managers takes you under their care, sets up relevant calls, listens closely to get to know your ideas, needs and requirements. This part varies greatly, as your specification can be written down in four forty-pages-long PDFs or one, highly condensed email (both real-life examples from our past).

Then, we enter the discovery phase.

The first part is called the initial scoping session. Based on our experience, the provided specification, and some quick research, we provide you with a ballpark estimation. This estimation is not completely accurate and can’t be so. You say: “I want a car,” and tell us the color and all the other details, and we then tell you that its cost can vary from X to Y. Then, based on the style of our communication, types of questions we ask, and the price range we offered, you decide whether you want to proceed with us.

But to close the deal we need something more detailed.

In order to validate your business ideas, we need to understand your objectives and have real interactions—we use the Discovery Workshops for that.

That’s when you and our team composed of: designer, developer, business analyst, and project manager, meet remotely (we love using Zoom) for a few sessions over two days to achieve a mutual goal. The outcomes of the workshops are defined and crucial:

• common understanding of business goals, user needs, and technical feasibility
• common understanding of groundwork for constant validation of the above.

During those two days, we try to unveil the truth about your idea and then start building the documentation.

To do the former, we are in constant inquiry mode and ask a lot of questions via calls or Slack. Some may seem boring to you, but they’re really important to us. Some will be tough, but necessary, and it’s easier to ask them during an online meeting. There is much less space for miscommunication in a conference room (even a virtual one!) than in the email threads. Instead, it brings focus and sense of importance and urgency (two-day timeframe).

Sometimes a workshop is just a compilation of necessary questions asked in particular moments and in a particular order.

#product design #user experience #development