In the IT business, companies build their internal processes over years, going the same road again, writing guidelines and rules the hard way. There is no one-size-fits-all process which would be accepted by the community to the dot, so from time to time people like to look ‘over the fence’ to see how everything works there. Until you look over, you think that dollars are greener on the other side.

We don’t know how useful our experience could be for anyone of you, but from now on we’ve decided to gradually increase the transparency of the development process at Rosberry. We believe it might make the life of our clients easier whereas peers could compare experiences.

Sure thing, we haven’t come to the current understanding of the development process with one flick of a magic wand. We still have to deal with lots of issues — we change, modify and improve almost on a daily basis. No doubt, we read and keep on reading smart books, we study third-party experience, but everything that is used now has been tested by us as a matter of practice and hard won.

The whole process at Rosberry, probably like in many other studios, consists of several stages. So far we have eight:

1. Discovery & Inception

2. Wireframing

3. Visual Design

4. Documenting

5. Development

6. Testing

7. Launch

8. Support

In this article I will talk about the very first stage — Discovery & Inception (D&I).

This stage takes 2 to 4 working weeks on average (depending on the project scale and complexity) calculated as 1 UI/UX analyst designer to spend 40 man-hours a week. We have to be honest, at the pre-project stage almost every client says that it is an additional money-consuming piece which they believe we can do without. And yes, we spend a lot of time carefully explaining what it’s all about and why it is so important. But all these efforts are absolutely worth it. For the last 10 years, we have learnt that in 98% of cases, even a well-established and full-fledged business reaching out to us with a specific task, in a request for proposal can hardly cover all the points and answer all the questions we would need to develop a high-quality product (both in terms of design and development).

At the pre-project stage both the client and contractor often understand the importance and priority of information differently. Preparing a project description, the client, as a rule, looks past the things which become really pivotal at the wireframing and visual design stages. But no big deal. Actually, we are all here (running through brick walls) to help a client deal with any issue and bring something useful, beautiful, user-friendly and cost-effective to life.

By the way, no client has ever told us that we wasted their money at the discovery and inception stage. And conversely, each of them started looking at themselves, their idea, the whole project and, of course, at Rosberry quite differently. By ‘differently’ I mean in a more objective, more organised, more cost-effective and market-conscious way.

And now, let’s give a closer look to the D&I stage.

Discovery and Inception in brief

At this stage, we define and describe the target audience, write the app use case scenarios, develop a Customer Journey Map from the moment a user learns about the application and to achieving their goals. Basically, we do our best to understand and describe what we will do and for whom — the more details the better.

Doing the job at D&I stage, we often come across quite a large, if not to say, a huge number of interesting business, organisational and technical tasks, as well as functional features of the application, which our customers have neither suspected nor thought about. Thanks to the collaborative work at this stage, the designer, the product owner and the client understand what they will get in the end. They understand it in every way: functional, time- and cost-wise.

1. Business & subject domain study

This stage is an introductory, yet a very important step allowing us to understand how the application will fit into the client’s business and help to potentially develop it further.

Sure thing, depending on the specific character of the client’s business, we first prepare a list of questions to be asked. Then we arrange a conference-call and discuss everything in detail. After this long conversation (oftentimes several calls) we make a document which comprises everything that we have managed to find out and learn. To make it easier for the client to communicate, we often provide a list of questions in advance. Yet again all the details are discussed only during voice-calls because lots of additional questions may come to light throughout the dialogue.

Actually, the more honest and open a customer is answering our questions and sharing information, the better we understand their business, their goals, vision and challenges we would help them with.

2. Personas