Agile Discovery Phase: The Ultimate Guide

The Discovery phase will be in between your initial idea and when you start to build/deliver your project – “Delivery Sprint 1”. When planning the schedule of your Discovery, avoid any unnecessary pauses between the conclusion of Discovery and the inception of Delivery. The Discovery period will provide lots of momentum to your team that you won’t want to waste or risk forgetting. 

Whilst we are referring to Discovery as a kick-off phase to a project, it’s important to recognise that “discovery” as a concept doesn’t end with the Discovery phase. Teams often unearth additional unknowns during Delivery, requiring an Agile approach in clarifying and addressing these gaps in knowledge in a way that promotes continuous re-integration of new learnings – Continuous Discovery happens throughout the project lifecycle.

As a rule of thumb, the duration of the initial Discovery phase should only be about five percent of the project’s overall time and budget. For example, if the project is estimated to take three Sprints (six weeks) to complete, you’ll want to dedicate about two full days to Discovery. If your project is larger and estimated more toward six months, you’ll benefit from a full 2-week Sprint for Discovery.