The number of participants will also depend on the context of your organization.
If you’re doing an in-house product discovery, you might not need more than your core discovery team and 1-2 other stakeholders like your CEO or an external subject matter expert.
If you’re an agency doing product discovery for a client, you’ll need to involve them (or their representative) and members of their team as well as your own discovery team.
The ideal number of participants in a discovery workshop is between 4 and 7.
Regardless of exactly who’s participating in your discovery workshop, what’s key is that they make a cross-functional team.
A cross-functional discovery team will ensure a diversity of opinions during the workshop, and help you make a better product.
Choose the appropriate tools and techniques to use during the workshop
An essential part of preparing for a product discovery workshop is choosing the appropriate tools and techniques that you’ll use during workshop activities.
The tools you choose will depend on several factors, the first being if it’s an in-person, remote or hybrid discovery workshop.
If you’re doing an in-person workshop, you’ll need basic tools like a whiteboard, sharpies/pens, and sheets of paper.
If you’re doing a remote or hybrid discovery workshop, you can use a digital whiteboard or canvas tool such as:
FigJam
Miro
Invision’s Freehand
Canva
Using these digital tools is a good idea even if you’re doing an internal, in-person discovery workshop.
You’ll have a much easier time documenting and sharing the workshop’s outcomes.
You’ll also need a conferencing tool like Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, whichever you prefer.
There are plenty of options for storing and sharing documents, but Google Drive is the best option due to its simplicity, wide range of features, and market share.
The tools you use will also depend on the purpose of your discovery workshop.
A design-focused workshop will use different tools and techniques compared to a workshop focused on validating your product idea.
Also, keep in mind that If your product is simple, you might need to hold only one workshop during product discovery.
For more complex products, it would be wise to hold several workshops.
This won’t only speed up your discovery process but also yield better results than if you crammed everything in one days-long workshop.
Stick to a structured agenda during the workshop
The most important part of preparing and leading a product discovery workshop is preparing and sticking to a structured agenda during the workshop.
A well-structured agenda is key to the success of your product discovery workshop.
A clear discovery workshop agenda will keep the workshop focused and greatly aid you in achieving the goals you’ve set for the workshop.
Pictured below is an example of a discovery workshop agenda.
The person in charge of creating and managing the agenda is the facilitator – here at DECODE, our product manager fills that role during our discovery workshop.
They’ll first go through the agenda point by point with all participants at the start of the workshop.
They also guide all participants through the activities, lead brainstorming and ideation sessions and recap after each activity.
Another facet of their role is keeping stakeholders actively involved in the activities.
The value of the facilitator role is that they enable everyone to align and understand what happens next in the discovery process once the workshop is finished.
Document and share workshop outcomes
As you’re going through your workshop’s activities, it’s vital that you document all the work that’s being done during the workshop.
You, or the workshop’s facilitator, should assign someone to take notes during brainstorming sessions, ideation sessions and any other meetings you might hold during the workshop.
Other than being very useful as you continue with product discovery, documenting all the work also promotes transparency and accountability.
Transparency is vital to the success of product discovery, especially if you’re an agency that does product discovery for clients – this is why transparent collaboration is one of our core values here at DECODE.
It’s also important to use tools that enable easy sharing and where you can track any changes made to the documentation.
Google Docs is a good option for this, as it logs the edit history of every document and allows participants to leave comments if something is unclear.
Once you’re done with the workshop, you should create a document listing all the deliverables and outcomes of each activity.
This will act as a handy reference during the rest of your discovery process while also promoting transparency.
You should share this document with your discovery team and all relevant stakeholders.
Follow-up and implement workshop outcomes
After you’ve finished the workshop, it’s a good idea to hold a short debrief session with all participants.
This is where they can ask for clarification if something remains unclear, and you can make sure everyone is fully informed about the workshop outcomes.
This is also an excellent opportunity to get feedback on the workshop itself and identify areas for improvement.
Once everyone fully understands the outcomes of the workshop, your next step is to plan the next phase of your product discovery and how to implement the outcomes.
If you’ve held a workshop about validating your product idea, you’ll be able to define the scope of your product and your MVP.
On the other hand, if you’ve held a design-focused workshop,, you can use the deliverables to further refine your product’s design.
So, if you’ve made wireframes and user flows, your next step could be to create a wireflow, as pictured below.
With a wireflow, you can validate both your wireframes and user flow with your users before creating mockups and prototypes.
You should also take all the deliverables and implement them into your product discovery roadmap.
For example, you can incorporate the user journeys you’ve created in your user research.
Regardless of the specifics, it’s important to implement the outcomes of your discovery workshop in the rest of your product discovery process.
Conclusion
Product discovery workshops are an excellent way to get all stakeholders involved in your discovery process quickly.
By holding a discovery workshop, you’ll be able to get everyone on the same page and aligned with your product vision.
And if you need help running a workshop, you’re in the right place.
We can help you set it up and run it – feel free to reach out and we’ll set up a call to discuss your needs in more detail.
Ivan is truly passionate about what he does. In his role as Lead Product Manager, his strength is shaping products that not only meet market needs but also wow their users. And with over a decade of experience at software companies and startups, he knows all the ins and outs of building successful products.
In his spare time, he enjoys staying active, whether it's hitting the gym, playing sports, or hiking. His dream office? A terrace in Komiža on the island of Vis, taking in the warm Adriatic sun.
