What role does discovery play in a project with many stakeholders (government or corporate)?

Alignment before the build prevents politics during the build

In large organisations there are multiple interests at play: IT, business, legal, communications, operational teams and sometimes external vendors. Without shared clarity, conflicting priorities, late vetoes and scope explosions arise.

What discovery needs to deliver

Under Imagine we typically focus on:

Shared problem and success criteria: what do you measure, for whom, by when?
Decision structure: who decides on scope, who advises, how do you escalate?
Mapping complexity: integrations, data owners, legacy constraints, compliance and accessibility explicitly on the table.
Direction and phasing: what is v1, what comes later, which hypotheses do you test first?

Working methods

Workshops, interviews, prototyping and documentation that records decisions (not just minutes) help secure commitment before the first large budgets are committed. This makes discovery not a slowing obligation, but fuel for Create and a smoother Evolve afterwards.