Projects rarely fail because the code was bad. They fail because nobody agreed what was being built. Discovery is where that gets fixed.
Discovery is not a sales exercise
A discovery phase that only produces a proposal has not done its job. It should produce something you could hand to a different agency and get a comparable quote.
What it should produce
- A written description of the current process, including the parts people work around
- A data model, even a rough one
- A list of integrations with their real constraints — not just "it has an API"
- An explicit scope boundary: what is in, what is deliberately out
- Ranked risks, with the riskiest assumption tested first
Why the boundary matters most
Scope creep is not caused by clients changing their minds. It is caused by nobody writing down what was excluded. A single page listing what version one will not do prevents more disputes than any contract clause.
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