What is Discovery?
Why many of my Agile colleagues were unaware of the term "Discovery" in Agile Product Management?
Not long ago, I was in a room full of experienced Agile practitioners, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and even a few Coaches.
I asked a simple question:
“Who here can walk me through your Discovery process?”
They all seemed unaware of the term.
One of them asked the following question in return:
“Discovery? Do you mean Sprint Planning?”
The very fact that they didn’t know what “Discovery” is was more than enough for me to see what was really happening. They were excellent at delivering work, but they had almost no shared language or structure for deciding what to work on in the first place.
I have used the word “Discovery” in fragments across various posts on Winning Strategy.
I want to dedicate this post to discussing what Discovery really is, why many Agile professionals haven’t been exposed to it, and how this gap quietly undermines the value of all that great delivery work.
Let’s get started.
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