What is a Discovery project?
Estimating
the cost of building software is much like estimating the construction
of a house. Both start with the vision of the owner; appearance, size,
function and about how much they can spend. These constitute the
initial overall system requirements. Of course the owner's vision may
be quite detailed. Regardless, unless the owner is also an architect
and building contractor, these overall system requirements are almost
always insufficient to project the time and materials, and hence the
cost of construction.
At some point an architect is needed
to design the complete structure (the blueprints). The blueprints match
the function, appearance and flow of each room to the overall system
requirements. The blueprints show the doors and windows but do not
state where to put the outlets, pipes or heating ducts. Many choices
that can affect the cost still remain.
In software, the
blueprints consist of some form of "Component and Interaction
Architecture", "Information Model", "UI Wire Frame", and "Use Cases"
(in terms of the Wire Frame) that fulfill discrete "Usage Goals" for
each type of user. The Use Cases, Wire Frame and Usage Goals constitute
a usage and behavioral model that should be sufficient to evaluate the
usability of the design prior to construction.
A Discovery project typically takes from 2-4 weeks and produces:
Discovery projects typically require; access to pre-existing documents, meetings with the owner(s) and meetings with potential (or current) users. If the project is a technology migration, the current system needs to be understood to produce a Phased Migration Plan.