This phase focuses on understanding the high-level goals, needs and timelines for the potential project. This is typically less than a couple of hours of conversation where the key stakeholders of the solution, such as business subject matter experts (SME), technical leads and project manager have a conversation with the leads from the potential implementation team (referred to as Business Architect and Technical Architect).
This conversation focuses on the establishment of a baseline understanding of the key business and technical drivers. Depending on the level of detail already known there are few templates available to help assist with documenting this initial session. Common roles that participate within this phase are outlined below.
Note: Keep in mind that exact roles can change based upon specific project needs. Additionally, it is common for individual people to be responsible for more than one role.
Technical Stakeholder / Sponsor
Person who will own the IT implementation initiative. This is typically a manager / executive.
Business Stakeholder / Sponsor
Person who will own delivered solution. This is typically a manager / executive.
Business Analyst / SME
Person who is familiar with the functional needs of the targeted solution.
Technical Leads
Person who is familiar with the technical needs of the targeted solution. This is commonly based upon involvement with existing / legacy systems or targeted integrations.
Business and Technical Architect
Person tasked with formulating the initial solution vision and architecture. This person will typically drive this initiative through following SA&P and Elaboration, Design and Planning phases and beyond.
A Business Architect is typically business and operations focused and commonly transitions into a lead Business Analyst or Project Manager.
A Technical Architect is a resource with significant solution delivery experience with the expected key technical components of the solution and often transitions to the Implementation Lead during the following project phases.
The outcome of this initial conversation will be to plan the Solution Analysis and Planning (SA&P) phase. Specifically, this initial discovery session should be able to provide insight into who needs to participate within, and how much time should be devoted to, the ensuing SA&P phase. This should allow resources to effectively plan their participation and involvement accordingly to maximize value of the SA&P phase.
Below outlines available supporting content for this section:
This document contains a list of 20 questions used during the initial discovery session to help drive to a baseline understanding of the needs. It will require SMEs knowledgeable with the business process and expected integrations. These questions are used to gain a more complete understanding of the proposed process and how this process is expected to work. The information gathered during this discussion will be used during the follow-up discussions and process discovery stages of a K2 project.
This is useful when having very early stage conversations around a project with very little set requirements or goals. Alternatively this can be useful when trying to gauge a number of potential projects in short order.
This can be distributed in advance of a conversation to help participants in a process discovery session prepare for the session. The aim is to have a high-level explanation to the listed questions.