The Codence Discovery Phase: Understanding Your Business First

Clear priorities reduce risk, optimize processes, and drive business value from day one.

Starting a project without understanding your business processes and user needs increases the risk of delays and costly mistakes. That’s why the Discovery Phase exists: to map priorities, uncover opportunities for ROI, and define the right path before any development begins.

Through this analysis, Codence demonstrates how focused planning, data interpretation, and stakeholder alignment turn strategic insights into actionable steps that boost efficiency, reduce risks, and ensure outcomes that truly support your business goals

The Problem with Skipping Discovery

The Discovery Phase is the first step in any project, designed to deeply understand the business, internal processes, user needs, and stakeholder priorities before development starts.

When executed properly, this phase can cut time to market by up to 30% (McKinsey) and increase the chance of project success by 28% (Standish Group). For executives, this means tangible, measurable ROI and reduced project fragility.

Skipping or simplifying this step often leads to starting projects without critical information, causing rework, delays, and solutions misaligned with strategic objectives. Common consequences include:

Wasted time

Jumping straight into development without full understanding often means building features that aren’t priorities or that will need to be redone. Teams may end up:

• Duplicating efforts and increasing costs.
  
  
• Facing delays due to adjustments and rework.

Misalignment across teams and stakeholders

Without a structured Discovery Phase, teams and stakeholders may interpret goals differently, leading to:

• Confusion about responsibilities and deliverables.
  
  
• Slower collaboration and reduced efficiency.

Solutions that don’t support business goals

Lack of prior analysis can result in products or processes that fail to address the right problems, causing:

• Investment in solutions that deliver little ROI.
  
  
• Frustration with irrelevant outcomes.

Read more: The Role of FP&A in Financial Strategy

Expected Benefits and Outcomes

When done right, the Discovery Phase positively affects every stage of a project. It provides a clear view of business needs, stakeholder priorities, and internal processes, allowing decisions to be made confidently. Key benefits include:

More strategic decisions

Detailed discovery and business analysis let teams base choices on data and full context, reducing the risk of pursuing ineffective solutions. Prioritizing high-value actions prevents wasted effort on secondary initiatives.

Reduced resource waste

Early analysis identifies critical focus areas, ensuring human, financial, and technical resources are used efficiently, avoiding recurring mistakes and preventing the escalation of unexpected costs.

Clear roadmap and efficient execution

Turning insights into an actionable roadmap creates a detailed project plan. Every step has clear goals and success metrics, making progress predictable and enabling rapid adjustments when priorities shift.

Codence’s Discovery Phase

Codence treats the Discovery Phase as the strategic starting point for every project. The goal is to deeply understand the business, processes, and stakeholder needs before recommending technological solutions.

This approach ensures decisions are data-driven, minimizes rework, and maximizes the chances of project success. Every subsequent project phase is planned using real insights, focusing on value delivery and aligning resources with strategic objectives.

Main Objectives

• Gain a complete understanding of the client’s landscape through business analysis.
  
  
• Map existing processes, challenges, and opportunities for ROI with process mapping.
  
  
• Align expectations among all stakeholders via stakeholder workshops.
  
  
• Establish clear roles for developers and stakeholders.

Main Activities

• Initial consultation to define business goals and ensure everyone shares a common understanding.
  
  
• Design and planning of resources, functions, and timelines aligned with priorities.
  
  
• Technical analysis of requirements, estimates, and potential solutions.
  
  
• Continuous communication, including periodic reviews, hypothesis validation, and iterative adjustments.

Read more: Why Financial Companies Trust Codence for Custom Systems

How Codence Differs from Traditional Requirements Gathering

Traditional requirements gathering often produces long feature lists but fails to explain why those features matter, who benefits, or how they fit into real workflows. 

The result is documentation without clarity and solutions that miss business objectives.

Codence approaches Discovery through a business-aligned lens, focusing on measurable value, operational impact, and strategic outcomes.

We go further by:

• Using user stories to uncover real needs, mapping each requirement to the actual roles, actions, and outcomes that drive your processes. (“As a _, I need _ so that _.”)
• Connecting people, processes, and technology early, ensuring solutions reflect how the business truly operates—not how a feature list assumes it does.
• Combining planning, detailed workflow analysis, and continuous client involvement to maintain alignment and eliminate ambiguity before development begins.
• Reducing the risk of misalignment and project failure by grounding every decision in business goals, ROI potential, and prioritized user needs—not guesswork.

This approach shifts Discovery from documenting features to designing a clear, validated path to business value.

How Codence Conducts the Discovery Phase

Codence combines strategic planning, data analysis, and stakeholder alignment to guide decisions from day one. Proprietary tools help structure information, detect trends, and convert data into actionable insights.

Turning Discoveries into Action with Codence

Reflecting on how your team manages projects and makes decisions is key to spotting improvement opportunities. The Discovery Phase ensures a deep understanding of the business and that every initiative delivers real value.

It’s time to move from insight to action. Request a consultation with Codence to see how agile practices, custom tools, and strategic analysis can elevate your projects’ efficiency and innovation.