The most expensive software is the kind nobody needed. Discovery is cheap insurance: a few weeks spent making sure the problem is real before you spend months solving it.
Test the problem, not the solution
Before a single screen is designed, you should be able to state who has the problem, how often, and what they do about it today. If the answer is “nothing,” you may not have a problem worth paying to solve.
A lightweight loop
- Frame the riskiest assumption as a question you can answer in a week.
- Build the smallest thing that answers it: a clickable prototype, not a product.
- Put it in front of five real users and watch, don't pitch.
- Decide: proceed, pivot, or park. Write the decision down.
3–4 wksto a tested prototype and a go/no-go decision
Falling in love with the problem keeps you honest. Falling in love with the solution is how budgets disappear.
Discovery does not slow you down. It stops you from building fast in the wrong direction, which is the slowest thing of all.