Let’s start by facing up to the largest inconvenient truth of technology: it is expensive. It’s expensive in ways you never dream possible until you get involved in a technical project. Tech projects can eat cash like a shredding machine jammed in “hide the evidence” mode. Tech projects are probably second only to parenting in terms of their ability to generate hidden monetary black holes. You have been warned. On both counts.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t undertake your technical project (or indeed start a family); far from it. It’s just that you’d probably benefit from inserting another phase early on. By which I mean: in many cases people expect to go straight from Inspired Idea to Awesome Online Service.
Hold your horses.
Would you benefit from a discovery phase? Probably. It’s admittedly a less glamorous and less exciting phase than the others, but it could turn out to be the one which saves you the most money. And money saved at this stage equals less of a dent in your P&L which means less of a reliance on investment early on which in turn leads to increased equity for you in your own idea.
Here are some questions you ought to be asking during a discovery phase:
- Does your idea work?
- Could it be improved?
- Could it be slimmed down?
- Has it already been done?
If you are the entrepreneur here, chances are that you are reeling a bit at some of those suggestions. They may even feel borderline insulting. If that’s the case then you should definitely stop and think before committing to development: you’re too emotionally attached to the idea and you need to separate your great plan from your (justifiably) sizeable ego and this “exploration” phase is the best way to do that.
Some processes which you ought to consider are:
- Collecting opinion through canvassing (if your ideal is retail-related, you could pay three or four local students £10 an hour to stand outside shops one afternoon for 3 hours, armed with clipboards and insightful questions. Student labour for an afternoon: £120. Value of insight: priceless)
- Collecting opinion through online surveys (there are numerous free, flexible, online survey systems available right now. Spending an hour or two crafting intelligent questions and inviting friends and friends-of-friends to complete the survey costs nothing and you will almost certainly learn something of value)
- Paid experimental ads (think up what you imagine to be your strongest selling points and most searchable traits and invest a few hundred pounds learning whether or not the internet at large sees things the same way you do)
- Initiate a product steering group (friends, business partners, LinkedIn connections – invite these people to a breakfast meeting with free breakfast – these are cheaper than free lunches and less disruptive to invitees’ working days. Also people are likely to drink coffee and say what you like about the bean, it certainly gets ideas flowing)
Learn from the traditional Product Development community. They invest a lot of time and effort in “keeping things human” way before even a prototype is created. Conversation, surveying, reflection and a few giveaway coffee / croissant combos are way cheaper than even mocking up a clickable prototype.
Software's About People 