Discovery Process

Steps for Digital Product Management & Development

1. Discovery Plan Creation

Research and draft initial plan

Conduct intake and analysis
- Business goals, stakeholders, and roles
- Challenges, competitors, and partners
- Existing capabilities, initiative vision

Research and draft initial plan
Incorporate customer feedback
Allocate responsibilities

2a. Validate FirstWhen you need to examine the problem first, then use insights to find your breakthrough path.

Problem Definition

Clearly define the challenge, the current state of the business, what is or is not working, and effective paths to transformative improvement.

Stakeholder interviews
Success criteria
Existing business process assessment
Field research
- On-site analysis
- ”Day in the life” – employee shadowing
Quantify impact of issues

Potential Opportunities*

Widen analysis to leverage the full force of Altus Nova's product strategy, management, and development expertise to examine unforeseen breakthrough potentials.

New business strategies
Revenue opportunities
Potential ROI models
Partner opportunities

* Opportunity exploration is optional

Solution Vision

Align around a clearly defined vision of project success including what an improved experience looks like for each set of stakeholders.

Solution-state process definition
User journey definitions
Key experience wireframes
Change management strategies

2b. Design FirstWhen you need to see your vision first in order to validate and refine your breakthrough path.

Ideate

Visualize concepts
Create excitement
Align expectations

Validate

Real-world feedback
Verify feasibility
Identify roadblocks

Refine

Incorporate feedback
Establish technical approach
Avoid reinventing wheels

3. Execution Plan

Detailed plan, architecture and roadmap with rapid deliveries and incremental releases that can be digested by the org.

Technology needs assessment
Risk mitigation options
KPIs & scorecards
Tech & Ops
Monitoring strategy
Data management strategy
Prioritized feature list
Potential technology partners
12 to 36 month roadmap

4. Build

Gear up
System build
System deployment and stabilization
Automation and support

System Build Phases (Agile)

Gearing Up

Stand up infrastructure
- Environments, code repo,
  accounts, etc.
Start backlog development for first 3 to 4 sprints
Create UI kits & high-fidelity design comps
Conduct vendor capabilities and gap analysis, selection & pricing
Perform vendor validation through POCs
Provide detailed architecture definition based on final tooling
Establish volumetrics projections

System Build

Sprint-by-sprint development
Testing and bug fixes
Ongoing detailed user stories
Ongoing story grooming and sprint planning
Sprint demos and course correction
Establish downstream environments (QA, Staging, Production, etc.)

System Deployment & Stabilization

Deploy
User acceptance testing
Initial end user feedback
Critical fixes and improvements

Automation & Support

Setup monitoring and alerting
Automate key test cases
Automate deployment

hello@altusnova.com

3300 Bee Cave Road
Suite 650-1243
Austin, Texas 78746