Discovery | Creating Your Next App From Scratch

Overview

Many of our clients need to invest time in planning and scoping their projects before initiating development. We put you in a room with top engineers, designers and project managers to collaborate on the best way to achieve your project's objectives. We help validate your idea against a potential user base and derisk the path to a viable product. Each Discovery engagement is customized based on your business needs. Discovery is a great next step if your goal is to go raise funding or to make sure you have solidified your vision before starting a project.

You can find some of the terms you'll hear in discovery in our Glossary

Step One: Background

Prior to initiation, we will align on what your goals are for this process, and how and when we can meet them.

Examples:

Code Review
API Research
Project Roadmap

Path to MVP
User Flows
Product Features List

Budget
Resource Allocation
Timeline

Step Two: Discovery Meeting

ClearSummit Team: Usually consists of a developer, a designer, and a project manager.

Client Side: Stakeholders. We like to have at least 2 people from the client side to make sure that there are multiple perspectives and skill sets represented.

What Happens:

We prefer to meet in person, if possible, but have ha some very productive virtual meetings, too. The meeting should take a minimum of 2 hours, but we usually need 3-4 to gather the right information. We initially talk about the goals for the meeting, and then dig into the goals for the project itself.

We love whiteboards! We usually have a lot of fun in these sessions, and hope our clients do too. We incorporate brainstorming, discussion, and actual decisions into the meeting. Our goal is to educate ourselves on your business needs, and to educate you about the software development process. We schedule the next meeting for about 2 weeks out, and make sure we are aligned on deliverables.

Step Three: Internal Meetings

The client side will walk away with a list of tasks, such as providing documentation and creating lists or workflows. ClearSummit will meet internally to discuss their ideas and impressions. The first draft of deliverables will be created and circulated for internal feedback, once Client’s homework has been completed. We then may set up meetings with invidiual stakeholders, or interview some of your customers or users.

Step Four: Draft Review

A video conference or in-person meeting is scheduled to review and discuss the first draft of deliverables. ClearSummit will present its vision for how the full scale project should go, and answer Client’s questions.

At this point, the Client should understand the direction of the project. They will have a better understanding of the roadmap to manifest their project and what will make their project unique.

Step Five: Finalization

ClearSummit will incorporate the feedback from the First Draft Meeting into the deliverables, and give a final handoff.

The Client will have a better understanding of the technical considerations as they think about entering into the design and development phases of their project. The Client should have a more clear vision of the necessary steps to take in order to bring their project to life.

The entire discovery process usually takes about a month, but could be more or less depending on the particulars of the process and the schedules of the parties.

Discovery & Consultation