Most software projects begin with a requirements document.
Pages of user stories, workflows, business rules and acceptance criteria are carefully assembled before development begins. These documents create alignment, establish priorities and give engineering teams a clear understanding of what needs to be built. Without them, software projects quickly become difficult to coordinate.
The problem is that requirements documents often create a false sense of certainty. They describe what a business believes it needs at a particular moment in time, but they don't always explain whether those requirements solve the right problem. That's where discovery becomes fundamentally different. Documentation captures decisions that have already been made. Discovery exists to question those decisions before they become part of the product.
Although the two activities often happen alongside one another, they serve very different purposes. One records understanding. The other expands it.
Discovery reduces uncertainty
Requirements documents are designed to capture information. Discovery is designed to challenge it.
A business might request a customer dashboard because stakeholders believe they lack visibility. Another organisation may ask for automated notifications because customers appear to be missing important updates. A product owner might insist that artificial intelligence should be introduced because competitors have recently adopted similar capabilities.
Each request sounds specific enough to become a requirement. Discovery begins by asking why. Why is visibility missing? Why are customers ignoring updates? What problem is artificial intelligence expected to solve?
Those conversations often reveal that the proposed feature is only one possible solution. Sometimes it remains the right one. In many cases, however, a simpler workflow, a redesigned business process or a small improvement to an existing feature delivers greater value with significantly less complexity.
Without discovery, teams risk documenting assumptions instead of understanding problems.
Documents explain what. Discovery explains why.
A well-written requirements document explains what a system should do. Discovery explains why it should do it.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as software grows more sophisticated. Every feature influences data models, APIs, permissions, integrations and future development. Once implementation begins, changing those decisions becomes progressively more expensive because other parts of the system gradually begin depending on them.
Understanding the reason behind a requirement gives teams the freedom to explore different approaches before committing to implementation. A reporting dashboard may eventually become an automated weekly summary. A proposed approval workflow may disappear entirely after an internal business process is redesigned. An expensive integration may prove unnecessary once the underlying operational challenge has been properly understood. Requirements define a solution. Discovery ensures the team is solving the right problem.
Developers benefit from discovery too
Discovery is often viewed as something owned by product managers, business analysts or stakeholders. Developers are expected to become involved once requirements have been finalised and implementation begins.
In practice, that separation rarely produces the best software. When developers participate in discovery, they gain an understanding of the business context behind every requirement rather than simply receiving a list of features to implement. That understanding influences architectural decisions, API design, database structures, scalability and long-term maintainability. Engineers frequently identify technical opportunities or potential risks long before they become expensive to address.
This is one of the reasons engineering teams at Truffaire are encouraged to participate in discovery conversations rather than joining only after requirements have been documented. When developers understand the business context behind a feature, they can contribute architectural insights, identify hidden risks and often propose solutions that are both simpler and more scalable.
Discovery isn't only valuable for product teams. It makes engineers better problem solvers.
Discovery doesn't end when development begins
One of the biggest misconceptions about discovery is that it ends once development starts.
Successful products rarely follow that pattern. Every release creates new opportunities to learn. User behaviour reveals assumptions that planning couldn't predict. Analytics highlight unexpected usage patterns. Customer feedback uncovers opportunities that requirements documents never considered. Business priorities evolve as markets change, forcing products to adapt alongside them.
For that reason, discovery should never be treated as a single phase within a project plan. It becomes an ongoing process that continues throughout the product's lifecycle.
Product teams at Truffaire approach discovery in exactly this way. Customer conversations, product analytics and feedback collected after launch continue shaping future iterations because the most valuable insights often emerge only after real users begin interacting with the software.
The objective isn't to eliminate uncertainty before development begins.The objective is to reduce uncertainty continuously as better information becomes available.
Better questions create better software
Requirements documents remain one of the most valuable tools in software development because they provide structure, clarity and alignment across teams. Discovery doesn't replace documentation. It ensures that what eventually gets documented is built upon a genuine understanding of the business problem rather than assumptions that have never been challenged.
The strongest software projects are rarely defined by the size of their requirements documents. They're defined by the quality of the conversations that happen before, during and after those documents are written. Teams that remain curious, question assumptions and continue learning throughout development consistently make better product decisions than teams that simply execute specifications.
Perhaps that's the biggest difference between documentation and discovery. Documentation records what a team currently knows. Discovery exists to uncover what they don't.
