How we run a two-week discovery, without it turning into a swamp

A discovery that drifts is worse than no discovery at all. Here’s the cadence we land on with almost every client.

Week one: listen

• Day 1 — Kickoff. One hour. Align on goals, success metrics, and non-goals.
• Days 2–3 — Stakeholder interviews. 30 minutes each, 5–8 people. Same question set every time.
• Days 4–5 — Evidence audit. Analytics, session recordings, support tickets, sales calls.

Week two: decide

• Day 6 — Synthesis. We cluster findings into a handful of themes, not a wall of stickies.
• Day 7 — Options workshop. We present 2–3 plausible directions with trade-offs.
• Day 8 — Decision review. We narrow to one direction with the decision-maker.
• Days 9–10 — Plan & proposal. Scope, timeline, and budget delivered on Friday.

What we refuse to do

• Run discovery past two weeks. If you can’t make a decision in ten working days, more data won’t help.
• Produce a deck that no one will read. Our output is a three-page memo plus a scope doc.
• Chase consensus. We solicit input, then the right person decides.

The result

Eighty percent of our projects now kick off within a week of discovery wrap. The other twenty percent reveal that the real project isn’t what was originally scoped — which is exactly what discovery is for.