What is the Discovery Phase? - Building Advanced Blog/ CMS from Start to Finish (Episode 1)

The most important part of any web design project is how it all begins. I like to call this phase, "The Discover Phase". It should be the first thing you do, before mockups, wireframes, or you even write a line of code.

It is best to get everyone together into a room and figure out what everyone wants. We do what I call "an idea dump" where you throw all ideas and requests onto a document or whiteboard. It doesn't matter if the ideas conflict, or impractical, expensive or outside of scope. Everything gets recorded and dealt with early on in the process.

The goal of the Discovery Phase is that we leave this phase knowing exactly what we are doing. Not just what what the programmers and designers are going to make, but also so everyone at your client or company will know what to expect when it is complete.

Sometimes this involves having tough creative discussions or making decisions based on the scope of what is needed. Eventually this will need to be put onto a timeline or gantt chart to make sure that timeframes can be met with the accepted parameters.

If you are working in a freelancer or agency capacity it is important that you create a contract (usually called a "Scope of Work") at the end of this process which outlines the final decisions that were made, the full feature set, the technology stack, timeframes for certain milestones, and payment periods. Late payments and actions will also be recorded here.

Do not proceed into the next phases of web development until you have appropriately finished the Discovery phase. This is the difference between a good developer and great one, depending on if they did the discovery phase correctly and gave it the right amount of time that it required.

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Thanks for all your support!

[tkc]

I teach children for twenty years and I know it is a serious business to prepare for everything that you do. I hope you find the strength to carry on. Thanks for everything so far!

[don]

Thanks Alex ! I am super excited seeing the rest of the series.

[MichaelAllen]

It was great that you decided to upload this video. The brainstorming, analysis and design are very important in the process of developing a project.

[moneymayhem]

wow just discovered you, this is great information. I just finished a project (as a naive dev) that was a total nightmare. This looks like it will fill a large knowledge gap. so pumped!

[Warrant]

Wish I could press "like" twice. Really valuable information. Thank you, Alexander.

[hooman.e.]

Hi there, happy new year!! All of us are here for the next videos..

[illialevkov]

Thanks for the great videos! Looking forward for the next one!

[hxxzxtf]

It's 2020 and coronatime, I don't know whether I should proceed with this project or find a JAMStack alternative to build a fullfledged cms/blog.

[RafaelCapati]

This is valuable information, keep up the good work.

[shedgzz]

Thanks Man ....your doing a great What We Really Want....And thanks for doing this with Laravel and Vuejs... keep it up ALEX

[JacquesvanWyk]

Really this what i need i am always confused how to start project . this is going to be quality series and first one i will follow as videos come out.Reaally looking forward thanks alex

[Stormshappylifes]

Hi Alex

just wondering would you consider to use Jekyll to build front end and integrate into this project?

I've been trying to find something tutorial that can combine this two together.

Thanks so much!

[vladimirgreksa]

great stuff ^_^! I'll follow your next episodes

[masudurism]

great to see you again with a series. hope this will be great as previous. @jacurtis

[winex]

thank you so much for this.
i keep arguing with my clients because the keep changing there minds and im soo fucking frustrated because it's a waste of time and energy redoing all the work. and the budget is soo low. i never know that other web developers do it like this.
thank you, thank you thank you thank you thank
thank you 1000x.

[antonsirik]

Really good stuff, mate. When can we expect the next part of this series? thanks alot!

[johnfedoruk]

Got a job as a full stack software engineer, but they required I know laravel. I powered through your blog Playlist in a weekend, coming out with blog.johnfedoruk.ca (and now I'm lead on the backend - thanks!). I decided to add an access control list (roles) to the blog so non-contributors could sign up and comment. However, I implement my own schema and middleware for this because everybody else touts Sentinal and Sentry, overlooking the fact that these are not open source solutions.

I'll be following this tutorial, and hopefully guiding lost souls in the comments. I'm largely impartial as how or what you build in this series. However I would push for us stick to open source third party solutions.

Anyways, looking forward to the series. Thanks a ton, man!

john

[emeraldjunn]

do you have any questionnaire before you begin with discovery phase. So you have a litle background about the company?

[anubhavkarelia]

HI Alex, Do you have any draft work contract, which you use for your clients ?

[hoomaneshghi]

Hi there
Waiting for your next videos...