The discovery phase sets the foundation for successful MVP development. Learn what happens during discovery, why it prevents costly mistakes, and what to expect.
September 21, 2024 10 min read
The most expensive code is code you didn't need to write. Discovery exists to figure out what you actually need before anyone writes anything.
Most failed MVPs don't fail because of bad engineering. They fail because the team built the wrong thing—features users didn't want, solutions to problems that didn't exist, or products that solved real problems in unusable ways. Discovery is the process of identifying these misalignments before they cost you time and money.
This isn't bureaucratic overhead or agency upselling. It's the difference between building with a clear destination and wandering hopefully in the right general direction.
What Discovery Actually Is
Discovery is a structured process for defining what you're building and why. It happens before design and development begin. The output is a shared understanding—between you and your development team—of what success looks like.
The term gets overused. Some agencies call a brief intake call "discovery." Others use it for multi-month research projects. Useful discovery for an MVP sits in the middle: substantial enough to uncover real problems, efficient enough to not delay your launch.
At NextBuild, discovery typically takes one to two weeks. By the end, you have documentation that answers:
What problem does this product solve?
Who has this problem, and how badly?
What features address the core problem?
What features can wait?
What technical decisions need to be made upfront?
What risks might derail the project?
These aren't academic questions. Each answer shapes development decisions that would otherwise be made reactively, often expensively.
Why Skip Discovery and Learn the Hard Way
Founders resist discovery for understandable reasons:
You probably do—at a high level. But there's a difference between knowing you need "a booking platform" and knowing the specific interactions around cancellations, rescheduling, time zones, and confirmation flows. Discovery surfaces these details before they become mid-project surprises.
Stop planning and start building. We turn your idea into a production-ready product in 6-8 weeks.
"I already know what I want."
"We don't have time." The time you save skipping discovery is borrowed from later in the project. The questions discovery answers don't disappear; they just get answered during development, when answering them means rewriting code.
"It's just an MVP—we'll figure it out." MVPs especially need discovery. When you're building the smallest viable thing, every feature decision matters more. Including one wrong feature or excluding one critical one wastes a larger percentage of your limited scope.
"We've already paid for discovery elsewhere." Previous discovery work is valuable if it was recent and comprehensive. But if six months have passed or the scope has evolved, assumptions may be outdated. Markets move fast.
The pattern we see repeatedly: founders who skip discovery spend three to four weeks in development before hitting a fundamental question—"wait, how should this actually work?"—that resets significant progress.
The Discovery Process
Discovery varies based on product complexity, but follows a general structure. Here's what to expect:
Phase 1: Understanding the Problem
Before discussing solutions, we need to understand the problem you're solving. This sounds obvious, but founders often start with solutions ("I need an app that does X") rather than problems ("My customers struggle with Y").
During this phase, we explore:
Who are your users? Not demographics, but behaviors. What are they trying to accomplish? What tools do they currently use? Why do those tools fail them?
What triggers the need? When does someone realize they have the problem you solve? What are they doing immediately before they would use your product?
What does success look like? If your product works perfectly, what changes for the user? How would they describe the improvement?
Why hasn't this been solved? If the problem is real and the solution is obvious, why doesn't it already exist? This question surfaces assumptions worth testing.
This isn't market research—it's practical grounding. The answers inform every subsequent decision about features, prioritization, and user experience.
Phase 2: Feature Mapping
With problem understanding established, we map potential features. This isn't a wishlist exercise. It's rigorous prioritization.
For each proposed feature, we ask:
Does this address the core problem? If not, it probably doesn't belong in the MVP.
Can users accomplish their goal without this? If yes, it can wait.
What happens if we build this wrong? High-risk features need more attention.
How does this interact with other features? Dependencies complicate development.
The output is a prioritized feature list, typically using MoSCoW categorization:
Must Have: Features without which the product doesn't work
Should Have: Important features that can be worked around temporarily
With features defined, we address how to build them. Technical decisions made during discovery include:
Platform strategy: Web only? Native mobile? Which platforms first? These choices affect timeline and cost significantly.
Authentication approach: Simple email/password? Social login? Enterprise SSO? Each level adds complexity.
Data architecture: What data do you need to store? How does it relate? What queries will you run frequently?
Integration requirements: Which third-party services do you need? How reliable are their APIs? What happens when they fail?
Compliance considerations: Does your product handle regulated data? What certifications might future customers require?
These questions have technical answers, but they're driven by business requirements. The right database depends on your access patterns, which depend on your features, which depend on your users.
Phase 4: Risk Identification
Every project has risks. Discovery's job is to name them before they materialize.
We categorize risks as:
Technical risks: Can this actually be built? Are we depending on APIs that might not work as documented? Does the performance requirement exceed what the architecture supports?
Scope risks: Is the scope realistic for the timeline? Are there feature interactions we haven't fully specified? Could requirements change mid-project?
Market risks: Are we confident users want this? Could a competitor launch first? Is there a regulatory change on the horizon?
Execution risks: Is the client team available for decisions? Are there approval processes that could delay things? Do we have the right expertise for specialized requirements?
Not every risk can be eliminated. But named risks can be planned for. If we know a third-party API is poorly documented, we allocate extra time for integration. If we know client availability is limited, we batch decisions to minimize back-and-forth.
What You Get From Discovery
Discovery produces deliverables you'll reference throughout development:
Product Requirements Document
A clear specification of what you're building. Not a legal contract, but a shared reference that answers "is this in scope?" questions definitively.
A blueprint for how the product will be built. This includes:
Technology stack selections with rationale
System architecture diagrams
Database schema overview
API design approach
Hosting and deployment strategy
Security considerations
Project Plan
A realistic timeline with milestones. Not a Gantt chart fantasy, but an achievable schedule with built-in reviews.
The plan identifies:
Phase deliverables
Key decision points
Dependencies and blockers
Review and feedback cycles
Launch criteria
Risk Register
A named list of things that might go wrong and what we'll do about them. Each risk has:
Description of what could happen
Likelihood and impact assessment
Mitigation strategy
Owner responsible for monitoring
How Discovery Changes the Conversation
Beyond deliverables, discovery transforms the founder-developer relationship.
Shared vocabulary: After discovery, you're using the same words to mean the same things. "User" means a specific person with specific needs, not a vague abstraction.
Aligned expectations: You know what you're getting and when. No surprises about timeline, cost, or capability.
Informed tradeoffs: When something needs to change mid-project, you have context for making decisions. You know what matters most.
Reduced conflict: Most client-developer friction comes from mismatched expectations. Discovery surfaces and resolves those mismatches before work begins.
The relationship shifts from transactional to collaborative. You're not just hiring someone to execute your specifications—you're working with people who understand your business goals.
When Discovery Is Especially Critical
Some products can survive with lightweight discovery. Others need thorough exploration:
Complex domains: If your product involves specialized knowledge—healthcare regulations, financial compliance, logistics optimization—discovery ensures the development team understands the context.
Multi-user systems: Marketplaces, platforms, and collaborative tools have interactions between user types. These interactions need mapping before development.
Integration-heavy products: If you're connecting to multiple third-party services, each integration needs validation during discovery. Some APIs don't work as advertised.
Regulated industries: Compliance requirements constrain technical choices. Discovering those constraints late means rework.
Second systems: If you're rebuilding or migrating from existing software, discovery must document what currently exists and what needs to change.
What Happens Without Discovery
We occasionally take on projects that bypassed discovery—often rescue projects from other agencies. Common patterns emerge:
The pivoting project: A month into development, user feedback suggests the core concept is wrong. Without discovery's problem validation, the team built based on assumptions that didn't hold.
The endless project: Scope wasn't defined, so it keeps expanding. Every conversation adds requirements. The timeline stretches indefinitely because there's no agreement on what "done" means.
The integration disaster: A critical third-party integration turns out to be impossible as specified. Without discovery's technical validation, the team committed to something that can't be built.
The launch that isn't: The product is "done" but can't launch because basic questions—who approves content? how do users pay? what happens when things break?—were never answered.
Each of these patterns adds weeks or months to projects that might have taken eight to twelve weeks with proper discovery.
Making Discovery Work
To get maximum value from discovery:
Be available: Discovery requires your input. Block time for calls and document reviews. Delays in discovery translate directly to delays in delivery.
Be honest: Don't oversimplify your market or users to make the product seem easier. Complexity you hide during discovery emerges during development.
Bring stakeholders: If anyone besides you has decision authority—co-founders, investors, advisors—involve them in discovery. Alignment now prevents conflict later.
Challenge recommendations: Discovery should be a dialogue. If something doesn't make sense, say so. Better to debate during discovery than during development.
Accept tradeoffs: Discovery often reveals that your budget and timeline don't accommodate everything you want. That's valuable information. Use it to prioritize rather than ignore it.
The Discovery Investment
Discovery is typically priced as a percentage of overall project cost or as a fixed phase. At NextBuild, discovery ranges from $2,000 to $5,000 depending on product complexity.
The return on that investment is the difference between building the right thing efficiently and building the wrong thing expensively. Projects that skip discovery don't save the discovery cost—they spend it multiple times over in rework and pivots.
Key Takeaways
Discovery is how you ensure you're building the right product before committing development resources. It matters because:
Problem clarity prevents solution mistakes: Understanding who you're serving and why informs every feature decision
Scope definition prevents creep: Named features and priorities keep development focused
Technical validation prevents dead ends: Early identification of constraints and risks avoids mid-project surprises
Shared understanding prevents conflict: Aligned expectations between founders and developers reduce friction
The time spent in discovery is the highest-leverage time in any project. A week invested here can save a month of rework later. For what happens after discovery, read what to expect in your first week with a dev agency.
Ready to explore what your MVP actually needs? Schedule a discovery call to start the conversation about your product, your users, and the fastest path to launch.
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