Note: This transcript was auto generated. As our team is small, we have done our best to correct any errors. If you spot any issues, we’d sure appreciate it if you let us know and we can resolve! Thank you for being a part of the community.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. On today’s show, we are sharing with you our website discovery framework. First of all, let me set the scene. Many, many times have I endeavoured, and I mean endeavoured, to understand what it is that the client wants. I then document in as much as I possibly can in as clear a way as I possibly can, and then I develop some price for that. You know what happens in most circumstances? Well, number one, I don’t get it right. Number two, I miss a whole load of requirements. And lastly, I get the price completely wrong. This forced us to define a proper framework for our discovery. And that is what I want to share with you over the next few minutes. Before we continue, I’m going to link you to an Airtable that outlines all of these stages. So please feel free to clone that into your own Airtable. You can use Airtable for completely free or use the information in that to create your own spreadsheets or add it to your own checklist system. You’re going to find that over on agencytrailblazer.com/discovery-framework-template. That’s all one word, no spaces or check the show notes.
Lee:
Right, let’s crack on. Step one is to define your terms. What I mean is the phrases and the words and their meanings that your client uses. For example, what did they mean when they say user? What do they mean when they say candidate? It’s really important that we understand the technical phrases that are used in a particular industry or in a particular project so that when we are writing out our discovery findings, we can be really clear and we can talk in the right language. This also educates our client in how we speak. So for example, we would establish that the administrator is the person who is administering the WordPress platform. I I remember one project years ago where we were referencing the administrator and they had an internal job role of administrator who would do all of the office administration. So that caused a lot of confusion. Next, we want to establish all of the users. Let’s look at this as a web project, and we assume that there will be website visitors, website purchasers. We also assume there will be a administrator, there may be a marketer. If it’s an e-commerce website, there may be certain people who are responsible for picking and packing and shipping, etc.
Lee:
So it’s really essential that we establish all of the users. That’s everybody who is going to be involved in the project, but also in the ongoing maintenance and delivery of whatever services or solution we are developing. Next, we want to list out all possible journeys. If you imagine an e-commerce website, we have all of those different users, and all of those different users will have different outcomes. For example, User A may arrive at the website and simply want to sign up to a email list to receive updates of the latest offers. That is one possible journey. User B may come along and want to browse through the products and add a range of items to their basket. That That in itself is another journey. So if you can spend some time with your client and list out all of those possible journeys, both the users and the journeys will become very much a part of the document that you will then create. It’s at this point I would remind you that I released an episode a few months back, number 245, and that was called the Fun Way to Build a Website specification document. So if you want to look at how to develop the documentation in a more fun and less formal way, be sure to check that episode.
Lee:
That’s number 245. Okay, let’s carry on. Next, we get scientific. This means we take this list of journeys. We ensure that each journey is linked to all of the relevant users that will be involved in that journey. And we also link the systems, whether they exist or they are going to be built by this project, to that process as well. That would mean, as an example, we might have a user journey of registering as a candidate to a recruitment website that we’re going to build. We would include a list of all of the users that would be involved in that process. In this example, it would simply be the candidate who has landed on the website. Finally, we would mark out any other systems that might be involved. For example, with one of our projects, that candidate’s registration information needed to be passed on to another CRM platform. It was essential, therefore, we highlighted that in the document because that would form part of our ongoing discovery and part of the development plan. Now that we’ve got a list of the journeys we believe all of our users be engaging with, we need to list out the relevant actions or stages for each and every journey.
Lee:
So for example, if we go back to Registering as a Candidate, we would be listing out the step-by-step process. For example, they would fill in the application form on the website that’s associated with the candidate. Next, they might receive an email asking them to confirm their their information. Upon clicking a link in that email, they may be taken to their dashboard and so on and so forth. Whilst you don’t need to go into hyper detail on each one of these actions, it’s important that the action clearly describes what is going on. This means we’re not listing out every single field of the registration form, but we are at least acknowledging that a registration form is being filled in as part of the activity. At this point, you do have a choice. Depending on the amount of time that’s available for the discovery process, you could go into that granular detail in the notes section of each and free action. We tend to do this only where we believe more detail is required for us to be able to price up the job. We’re now in a position where we have a list of all of the journeys.
Lee:
We understand the who will be involved in each journey, and we also have a list of the actions that are going to take place within each journey. Now, what we want to do is match the users to the actions. I mentioned earlier that when somebody filled in a registration form in a recruitment system, that the information would then be fed into the CRM platform. Therefore, that part needs to be owned by somebody internally. Thus, We need to update our documentation to reflect this. We’ve now got the basis for a very informative document, and what we like to do is to group all of the journeys into phases. For example, with the recruitment project that I’ve referenced, we built out the user database and registration process as a phase one before we then developed the core database for the positions that would be available. This allows us to get this right, to get it tested and to get it signed off so that we can then focus on the next stage. The final step is to produce your document. And again, if you head on over to agencytrailblazer.com/discoveryframework template, you will see how we’ve used the features within Airtable to relate all of this information together and create a document which is easy to read, easy to understand, and forms pretty much 90% of what we will then be providing our client.
Lee:
On the right-hand side in the dashboard area, you can see the journey breakdown, which highlights the phase, the journey, and all of the individual actions with the users and the systems all highlighted, as well as any extra notes that support that particular line item. We’ve also put out there an example schedule that would show the overall flow of each and every one of those phases. By taking this systematic approach to the discovery process, we are ensuring that we cover absolutely every aspect of the project, and we also automatically generate the finished document that the client can then read through, they can sanity check, and they can sign off. All that’s left for us to do really is to export the journey breakdown section as a PDF, import that into word, add some introductory elements, and also add in all of the relevant quote information. We’re ready to rock and roll with a phenomenal discovery document that covers pretty much everything. However, let’s add in a little bit of a disclaimer. There is always going to be something that gets missed. So we always recommend that you also agree a contingency fund with your client, and that would be on a per phase basis, some percentage, say 30 %, where the client agrees that there may be something that got missed or a change control, and that thing can come out of the contingency budget.
Lee:
We are coming into land. I’m going to recap this episode for you. But before we do, can I remind you that our content is sponsored by Cloudways. You can find out more information about Cloudways and their services over on agencytrailblazer.com/cloudways. They have supported our online events and been the backbone of countless projects we’ve developed with clients around the world. One of the biggest benefits to us is the backup, the API for automation, and access to multiple leading cloud providers all in one interface. This means we can document all of our procedures and it doesn’t get messy. So again, check them out over on agencytrailblazer.com/cloudways. As I recap, can I encourage you to have the air table in front of you? So we said the first thing we need to do is to define those terms, understand the language of your client, and also have your client understand what you mean when you say certain things. Next, we want to establish all of the people, that’s the users, who will be involved in the project and affected by the project and be using the output of the project. Then we want to list all possible journeys that will happen.
Lee:
We want to match those journeys with the users and the systems that they will touch. And then for each one of those journeys, we want to list out the relevant actions. So that’s a step by step action for each journey. Then for those actions, we want to ensure we know what users are involved And finally, we group those journeys into phases and produce our overall discovery document ready to discuss a schedule and a price with our client. If you have any questions, we have a Facebook group. You can head on over to agencytrailblazer.com/group and come and join three and a half thousand agency owners who are all wonderful and awesome and are very open when it comes to asking questions questions and very helpful when it comes to offering advice. So if you’re not part of our group, please come and join us. We also would really value your feedback, and that means a five-star rating on your podcast player of choice. So if you really love our podcast and you get value from it, please could you give us a review and give us those covert five stars. If you utterly hate our podcast, maybe just keep that a secret and then just send me a private message to let me know what you’d like to change.
Lee:
All right, folks, you are awesome. I hope this has been helpful. Again, if you need more information, come and join us in the Facebook group, agencytrailblazer.com/group. If we don’t see you in there, then we will see you in next week’s episode.
