Discover what your product was always meant to do
Want to set your software project up for success and sidestep costly rework down the line? Start with software product discovery services.
Our discovery workshops transform ideas into clear roadmaps, intuitive user journeys, and features your users will love, all backed by sharp tech insight, market know-how, and engineering peace of mind that lasts well beyond launch.
We’ve helped 500+ businesses discover their true edge
We’re proud to be the software development partner of choice for Fortune 500 giants, small and mid-sized businesses, and trailblazing startups. Whether it’s streamlining operations, fueling the next unicorn, or backing bold funding rounds, we build software that transforms raw ambition into real traction and pitch decks into products that deliver.
“Going above and beyond” — that’s how our clients describe their experience with us
Bobby Gilbert
Senior Director of Digital Transformation at Sperry Rail
“My past experience was that third parties just don't get it. But Vention truly challenged our thinking: This PDW [product discovery workshop] was the first time I've seen a complex software project finish under budget and ahead of schedule.”
Jeff Shek
VP of Engineering, HistoWiz
“The impact they had on our deliverables cannot be overstated. The contractors provided invaluable support, going above and beyond to ensure the successful completion of our projects. Their expertise and dedication were instrumental in achieving remarkable results.”
Max P.
Founder, Experience management company
“Vention has saved us time and money. The quality of their work has been fantastic, and they work together as a great team.”
Lee Tupper
CTO, Remotiv
“We were initially enamored with the design work on some projects we reviewed. This led to a deeper vetting through conversations with the team and a few referrals. They provided a thorough project proposal after reviewing our specifications and we were happy with the proposed tech stack, resource plan, and estimated cost for the project.”
Software product discovery services built around your business needs
With a sharp understanding of your goals, constraints, and market landscape, we tailor our software product discovery workshops to fit your business, not the other way around. The result is clear priorities, faster alignment, and a product vision with clarity, momentum, and lasting impact.
Tech startups
Finding your angle fast can make all the difference in a market where timing is everything and differentiation is do-or-die. Product discovery workshops help you cut through the noise and surface real user needs, prioritize where to start, and secure funding with a clear roadmap.
Established software product companies
You’ve already earned your market share, so the new challenge is to protect and expand it. Discovery workshops help you confidently plan new features, product modernization, or scaling.
Enterprises
Looking for streamlined operations, automation, and enhanced customer experience? Discovery services will help you plan and build custom software to meet your unique goals, avoiding unpleasant surprises that pop up during development.
Venture studios and innovation hubs
Adopting a structured approach to idea validation, resource prioritization, and delivery planning — all at scale, spanning multiple startups and projects? Software product discovery deliverables will bring the needed clarity and visibility.
Our software product discovery services
Launching a new product, adding features, or tackling user churn? Each of these scenarios calls for a unique approach. Our tailored product discovery gives you a blueprint for successful software product development, revamp, or scaling. We offer a wide range of services, so you can choose exactly what you need — a single component or the full package.
Business, user, and market research
Each of our discovery sessions starts with profound research. In line with your goals, we dive deep into your business processes, market trends and opportunities, competitor moves, and user behaviors.
What you get is an unbiased, expert perspective on:
- Process gaps and optimization opportunities
- Target audience, their needs and preferences
- Competitors and their product features
- Unique value proposition
- High-potential market or niche
- User journeys and pain points.
Software product strategy and vision
Never face a situation in which your product fails to meet user expectations or derails due to scope creep, budget overruns, or shifting timelines.
What we deliver:
- Product charter and vision
- Product idea validation
- Functional and non-functional business requirements
- Product-market fit assessment
- MVP (minimum viable product) scope
- Feature prioritization
- Categorization of features into must-have and nice-to-have ones
- Clear project roadmap
- Project cost estimates.
UI/UX planning and wireframing
Get the look and feel of your software product before writing a single line of code. Ensure your user paths are smooth and straightforward with a set of tangible deliverables like:
- User stories
- User flow diagrams
- Application maps
- Wireframes
- UI screens
- Clickable prototypes
- Accessibility guidelines.
Software architecture design
Looking for a future-proof and scalable solution? Let our experts lay the technical groundwork.
What you get:
- High-level architecture with core components and data flows
- Required integrations with internal and external systems
- The list of recommended technologies (backend, frontend, cloud services)
- Recommended deployment option (on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, or a hybrid approach)
- Defined requirements for security, availability, scalability, and performance.
Risk assessment and mitigation
We scrutinize all the major risk categories (technology, operational, and user risks) to find weak spots early on and develop robust mitigation strategies.
What you get:
- Technical and operational feasibility checks
- Market and user analysis
- The list of risks categorized as low, medium, or high based on their likelihood and impact
- Contingency strategies.
Inside our discovery process
Discovery is all about clarity, so we believe in setting clear expectations from the start. Here’s what the typical discovery journey looks like:
Alignment with your business goals
This is the first touch point, where we intend to understand your goals, as-is situation, and anything that might be holding you back.
In line with your goals, we define the discovery scope and deliverables to be presented and compile the list of product-related assets to be analyzed (think
software product vision, market research, and UI screens). We also note the questions we need to clarify with your stakeholders.
In parallel, we form a cross-functional team tailored to your discovery goals. The team usually consists of a project manager, business analyst, designer, and developer, though we may also involve specialists like DevOps engineers or security experts, depending on your case.
Information collection
Our experts closely examine all the available product-related assets. If you can share user/market research, wireframes, or product architecture blueprints, we’ll start with them. If any critical assets are missing, we’ll close the gaps.
We also interview your stakeholders to uncover blind spots, define priorities, and ensure team alignment.
Ideation
With the research, our cross-functional team brainstorms, generates ideas, shapes product vision and unique value proposition, and formulates early versions of UI screens and product requirements.
Workshop
We present all key assumptions and options and discuss ideas with stakeholders to validate or refine them.
Presentation of results
Finally, we compile all the deliverables and results in a comprehensive presentation for stakeholders.
Discovery tactics we use
We combine strategic insight, technical evaluation, and creative exploration to ensure your product is grounded in real needs and built for success.
- Interviews with stakeholders to gather input from business leaders, product owners, and subject-matter experts to align goals, priorities, and constraints.
- Business process audit to map out and analyze your existing workflows to identify inefficiencies, gaps, and opportunities for digital transformation.
- Code and infrastructure documentation review to understand as-is architecture, integrations, and potential risks.
- Code review to assess code quality, scalability, maintainability, and spot technical debt (if any).
- Market research to find the relevant niche and ensure your product is a good fit.
- User journey mapping to identify pain and friction points, areas for improvement, or innovation.
- Brainstorming sessions to generate ideas and consider diverse perspectives.
- SWOT analysis to develop a strategy that plays to your advantage and mitigates risks.
- A/B testing to validate hypotheses, find out which ideas resonate with users better, and make data-driven decisions.
- Risk scoring to estimate the impact of various risk factors.
Map it out right and launch confidently with Vention
Getting started is as easy as 1-2-3:
1. Fill out the contact form or give us a call
2. Sign an NDA. Your ideas stay protected
3. Kick off your tailored discovery workshop.
The hidden dangers we surface early
Vague or changing requirements
Unclear requirements are a fast track to delays, rework, budget overruns, and sometimes product failure.
Standish Group's report suggests that projects with a defined discovery phase have a 28 percent higher success rate. Why? During the discovery, we align stakeholder expectations and deliver a comprehensive software requirements specification (SRS) that serves as your North Star at the development stage.
But that doesn’t mean you’ll be locked into a rigid plan. We put a flexible process in place to handle changes without risking scope creep, using Agile to iterate thoughtfully and adjust based on feedback.
Fancy but unneeded features
Here’s a stat that should raise eyebrows: eighty percent of features in the average software product are rarely or never used. That’s time, money, and effort lost.
Our discovery workshops ensure that you focus on what actually matters. Your winning trio is deep research of user needs, cost-benefit analysis, and rigorous feature prioritization.
Wrong tech decisions
Don’t block your product growth and user adoption with lagging performance, scalability, security, and compatibility issues. Our software architecture consultants design future-proof solutions tailored to your product’s short- and long-term goals. We also recommend tech stacks with cost optimization in mind, so your product scales smartly from the start.
Budget overrun and delays in delivery
According to studies, 70 percent of projects fail. This failure is usually due to the inability to deliver on time, stay within budget, or fulfill the original scope. It's painful but preventable.
The discovery phase helps you sidestep all of that. It’s the foundation for accurate project cost and timeline estimation, scope planning, and resource allocation.
Does it make sense to skip product discovery in case of tight project deadlines?
Tight deadlines call for action. While it may seem logical to sacrifice the discovery stage and go straight to development, we recommend doing quite the opposite, making sure there’s a discovery phase.
Discovery is not a formality, causing you a waste of time. It’s a strategic move that helps you plan, prioritize, and avoid costly mistakes, reworks, delays, or budget overruns during development.”
Alexander Matusevich
Delivery manager
Need hands-on support to turn discovery insights into a real product?
Looking for a partner who can move from strategic mapping to actual coding? We don’t just stop at workshops; we turn discovery insights into high-impact solutions that deliver.
Confident in the quality of our discovery deliverables, we’re ready to implement your vision and ensure it’s built exactly as imagined.
Need proof? We backed ClassPass from MVP to IPO, helped Thirty Madison grow from concept to unicorn status, and supported Freshly from seed stage to its $1.5B acquisition. So, what will your success story be?
Tech proficiency to cover every need
Backend, frontend, mobile, cloud, or all of the above? Whether your product runs on tried-and-true stacks or cutting-edge tech, we’ve got the skills to match.
With 3,000+ engineers fluent in dozens of technologies, including cutting-edge AI and blockchain, Vention gives you the power to bring even the most ambitious product to life.
Why Vention?
Years of experience in custom software development
Per year average client savings during software development
Clients served (and counting!
Of our clients came to us through referrals
Client IPOs supported
Raised in client acquisitions
We have established partnerships with tech leaders:
We embed security throughout our processes, adhering to an ISO 27001-certified security management system.
We’re proud to be consistently named among the fastest-growing companies, software industry disruptors, and outstanding outsourcing partners by some of the world’s trusted organizations.
Our success stories
Discovery that speaks your industry’s language
Every industry comes with its own processes, requirements, challenges, and opportunities. With hands-on experience across 30+ sectors, our team makes discovery fast, focused, and meaningful.
Here are just a few industries we know inside out:
Finance
Healthcare and life sciences
Real estate
Retail
Education
Automotive
Transportation and logistics
Marketing and advertising
Media and entertainment
Hospitality
From first sketch to final launch, we've got you covered
Partner with Vention to go from strategic insight to flawless execution, all under one roof.
FAQ
What risks do you consider and help mitigate?
While the scope of analysis depends on your particular needs, we usually consider technology, operational, and user risks. Here are a couple of examples of what we look at:
Technology risks: Technology incompatibility or obsolescence, difficulty integrating with legacy software, vendor lock-in scenarios, the need for refactoring legacy software, and performance, scalability, or security concerns.
Operational/business risks: Unrealistic project budget and timelines, new software/feature that can disrupt routine business flows, data migration that can result in data loss or downtime, insufficient software documentation for existing systems
User risks: An unintuitive user experience, insufficient training and onboarding materials, disregarded user categories, misinterpreted user needs, and fancy but unused features.
Who is involved in the software product discovery process?
Team composition may vary depending on your project’s needs. Still, the full lineup of potential roles includes: · A project manager coordinating all project directions, like scope, resource allocation, timelines, and risk management.
- A business analyst to bridge the gap between business needs, product vision, and requirements.
- A designer to shape and deliver the product’s look and feel.
- A solution architect plans high-level product architecture, building blocks, and integrations.
- A developer responsible for the product’s tech side, like feasibility, limitations, risks, and technology choices.
- A DevOps engineer to choose the fitting environment based on requirements for the product.
- A QA engineer to verify the product requirements’ testability early and plan a testing strategy.
- A security expert to identify potential security risks (like vulnerable third-party components and data exposure risks) and plan appropriate security controls.
How long does a typical product discovery phase take?
The discovery phase typically takes two to four weeks. However, its duration can vary depending on factors such as the project's complexity, stakeholder availability, and the depth of research needed.
How much does the product discovery phase typically cost?
As we tailor our discovery services to your particular needs, the cost of discovery strongly depends on the service scope and complexity of your project. Don't hesitate to get in touch with our team to discuss your case or fill out our project cost calculator form to get tailored cost estimates.
Should an existing product undergo discovery if we’re planning its modernization?
Absolutely. Discovery is a crucial step in product modernization. We take the same steps as during new product discovery: planning, risk management, and user journey mapping. Additionally, we examine the existing setup (architecture, code quality, or UX) to highlight any weak spots.
When is software product discovery a must?
Product discovery is essential when you need clarity around what and how to build it. It’s especially valuable in situations like:
- Build a new product from scratch
- Enter a new market
- Modernize an existing product
- Integrate a product with other systems
- Fail to reach the stakeholders’ alignment
- Face significant product user churn.