How to Conduct Successful Project Discovery Sessions

Shamli is an Application Analyst in Boise, Idaho. She is a focused, dedicated and motivated professional with 13 years of experience handling CRM projects using Agile and Waterfall methodologies.

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Topics: Lessons Learned, Risk Management, Scope Management

The past few years, I have worked on several different cloud computing projects in IT departments as a project manager and project lead. While every organization and project are different, if you look at the big picture you will see a common theme, an overarching story from different projects with different goals.

One of the most valuable things to do after project closing is conducting a lessons-learned session. The participants can include the delivery teams, key users from all departments involved, project managers, the product owner, scrum masters and end users—the more the merrier.

The common feedback I often hear in these sessions includes:

• “We did not consider this scenario in the process.”
• “We should have involved an IT architect early on.”
• “We did not foresee that risk.”

I’m so glad we live in a world where software development teams understand different types of agile methodologies; they find it easier to adopt them because of the flexible nature, and can keep everyone in the loop throughout the project execution phase. But as this feedback illustrates, the essential piece of the puzzle is to involve all of the key players early on—and keep them involved throughout project execution. And that brings us to the discovery session.

What is a project discovery session?
Project discovery sessions…

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