Remote Discovery with Adam Polansky

Discovery is one of the most critical points at the beginning of any project especially when the stakeholders and the project team don’t know each other. Discovery not only yields the information that will inform the rest of a project, it’s a time to start building relationships and trust among team members. We relied on exercises that invited collaboration using low-tech, face to face methods. Discovery could include meals or drinks together later. The success of discovery was due in-part to the human interactions that take place in person.
For me, everything changed in a day. On the first day my company made the decision to have everyone work from home, I was told that we had a new client; a big one. I was also told we would have to run a discovery session within days and it would be entirely remote. I was panicked. My experience relied on proximity! It relied on the intangibles of reading people and being able to pivot if an unforeseen dynamic presented itself. How the hell do you do discovery remotely?! That was only the first question.