‘We want a modern look and better navigation for our website.’
That sounds like a perfectly sensible idea. But what if the real problem has nothing to do with navigation at all?
That was one of the central themes in our recent webinar with Richard about discovery phases and why they matter.
The point Richard returned to in the webinar was simple. Discovery phases exist to reduce risks before delivery begins by helping organisations define their challenge, ask better questions and avoid committing time and budget to the wrong solution.
The session explored something most digital teams in charities, councils and other mission-driven organisations will recognise. Projects that begin with confidence, then gradually drift into confusion, scope creep and expensive compromises.
Discovery is the learning phase
‘Discovery’ is one of those terms that gets used to describe almost everything in digital projects. Workshops, audits, requirements gathering, stakeholder interviews.
Richard’s definition was much simpler.
Discovery is the learning phase of a project.
The aim is not to design solutions immediately. It is to understand:
- What the organisation is actually trying to achieve
- What users need
- What is and is not working already
- Which problems are genuinely worth solving first
That distinction matters because many organisations arrive at projects with a solution already in mind.
But discovery often reveals that the assumed solution is either incomplete, too expensive, or aimed at the wrong problem altogether.
As Richard put it during the webinar, ‘the most important problems are not always obvious at the start.’
To put it another way, the obvious solution is not always the right one.
One example from the webinar came from a recent project with the University of Oxford.
The original vision centred around an ambitious 3D visualisation of the tomb of Tutankhamun. But after user research and discovery work, the priorities shifted.
The primary audience did not actually need a complex visualisation first.
They needed:
- A reliable database
- Better access to information
- Stronger storytelling around the archive
So instead of immediately building an expensive 3D experience, the team focused on creating stories and content drawn directly from the material. The simpler approach created more engagement while also helping to build the case for future funding for the visualisation.
A similar thing happened during discovery work with War on Want.
Internal teams believed their articles were underperforming because of their appearance on the website. But analytics and audience research revealed something more interesting.
The audience for those articles was mostly engaged elsewhere, through newsletters and campaign channels on a separate site. Meanwhile, the main website had developed an entirely different audience: international visitors exploring the organisation’s work for the first time.
The challenge was not article formatting. It was an audience strategy. That completely changed the direction of the project.
Discovery helps organisations align internally
One of the most useful parts of the webinar was the reminder that discovery is often as much about internal alignment as it is about user research.
Different teams inside the same organisation frequently define success differently.
Campaign teams may want visibility. Service teams may want fewer support requests. Leadership may want a measurable impact. Content teams may want publishing flexibility.
All of those goals can be valid. But they can also pull projects in different directions.
Richard highlighted a lightweight exercise that Agile Collective sometimes runs, called a ‘success session’ or a theory-of-change workshop.
The workshop revolves around one deceptively simple question: How will we know this project succeeded?
That shifts the conversation away from features and towards outcomes.
Instead of:
‘We need a carousel on the homepage.’
The discussion becomes:
‘Users need to find their local pharmacy quickly.’
A good discovery saves money later
For organisations under pressure to deliver quickly, discovery phases can sometimes feel like a luxury.
But the webinar enforced the point that good discovery work usually reduces waste later.
That might mean:
- Avoid building unnecessary functionality
- Identifying technical risks earlier
- Preventing expensive mid-project changes
- Narrowing the scope to the most important problems
- Reducing disagreement during delivery
Particularly in local government and other mission-driven organisations, where projects sit inside procurement constraints, legacy systems and limited capacity, that clarity matters.
The webinar ended with a simple reminder:
Before committing to a solution, make sure you are solving the right problem first.
