We understand that trust is a key component of our partnerships with our clients. When you work with Trailhead to design, architect, and build software that is key to your business, you want to be certain that the result is what you expect and that it becomes a valuable investment for your organization.
For this reason, the Trailhead Discovery Workshop is a vital part of The Trailhead Process™. This workshop allows you to get to know the Trailhead team while we figure out exactly what we need to build together. It also answers your most important questions, like “How much will it cost”, “Is it possible”, and “How long will it take”. And to help make it as painless as possible, the Discovery Workshop comes with the Trailhead Guarantee:
If the discovery workshop doesn’t provide value for you, then you don’t have to pay for it.
In this article, we’ll walk through what you can expect when you embark on a Discovery Workshop with Trailhead.
Team Introductions
We’ll take turns each sharing some background from our professional career, industry, and experience at your company. We will take some time to share some personal interests and hobbies too, because we’re all humans, after all, and if we’re going to work together, it’s good to know each other a little bit!
Agenda Walkthrough
Next, we will get started by going over a high-level overview of the agenda and plan for the workshop sessions. We can add topics if there is anything in particular you want to make sure we discuss. For both online and in-person workshops, we’ll typically collaborate together on a virtual whiteboard to keep track of our topics and notes, like this:
About Trailhead
We will share more about Trailhead including the services we offer, our core values, and how we work with you as a client and long-term partner. This will help you know how to best take advantage of everything Trailhead can do to help make your software project successful.
History of your Company and Product
Tell us as much as you can about how the company was founded, the vision and goals, and more about the particular products that we will be focusing on during our workshop. This gives us the context and history we need to lay out the best path forward with you.
How does your team work now?
Tell us more about your development team (if you have one), and how they prefer to work including tools and processes that you use to develop and release software. No problem if you don’t have a development team or an existing process, we can either handle everything for you or if you have a development team but not a mature process, we can guide your team to use the Trailhead Process™.
What are your biggest challenges?
This might be one of the reasons you got in touch with Trailhead in the first place. Sometimes you already know the root cause of any existing problems in your product, architecture, or process, and we can help you solve them. Other times, you know things aren’t working as they should, but don’t know exactly why. We can help you dig into it to identify the root causes and help plot a path forward.
What are your goals?
You may already have a new software product or technology migration in mind. Trailhead can help assess your current platform and team and work with you to make a plan to achieve those goals. If you are building a new product or migrating to a more modern technology stack, Trailhead will work with you to identify the key requirements and develop a plan and estimates to get you there.
Deep Dives
Using the information from the initial workshop sessions, we will plan additional deep-dive sessions to get all of the necessary details for the next steps.
Along the way, Trailhead will have internal meetings or bring in subject matter experts from our team to discuss specific topics and recommendations. The deliverables from the workshop will usually include some of the following:
- Existing system state documentation and diagrams
- Use cases and wireframes for key interactions
- An architecture and recommendation document describing technologies, components, processes, and integrations
- Detailed time and cost estimates for an implementation phase
In our final workshop session, we’ll review the findings together, answer any remaining questions, and decide on the next steps.
Next Steps
The next steps after a Discovery Workshop vary for each client and project. Typically, Trailhead will have identified a series of tasks during the workshop. If the goals include a new product or migration of an existing one, Trailhead will provide detailed time and cost estimates to complete Phase 1 of the effort, either as a Trailhead-led delivery or in collaboration with your own development team.
Our goal with every workshop isn’t just to answer your most important questions, but also to establish mutual trust and set the framework for a long-term partnership.
Are you interested in hearing more or scheduling your own Trailhead Discovery Workshop for your software project? Contact Trailhead to find out more about our risk-free Discovery Workshops.
