Discovery Operations Guide

Present

Communicating Findings and Deliverables

What to Expect

In this stage, you’ll organize your findings into a report and produce any explicit deliverables that were decided on at the beginning of the project.

At this point, you might find that one of two extremes may have occurred: either you don’t return the results your Leadership and/or Stakeholders would like to hear, or you have confirmed exactly what they thought. For example, at a technology start up, a Founder might want to implement a certain feature or service. A research team might talk to users about the possibility of this feature or service and find that, actually, users either aren’t interested or only a few are. Given the interest, implementing the feature would not be worth the company’s time. Although this news might make the Founder a little disappointed, they will be able to review the team’s findings, see that they’re based in valid research, and make a wise business decision. Knowing not to implement will ultimately save the company time, money, and prestige.

Conversely, your research might confirm what your Leadership and Stakeholders previously thought. In this situation, it’s easy for people to say that they already knew this information and to question whether they should have enacted the entire research process. Point out that, previous to your research, the organization had an idea and some colloquial evidence of what might be happening, but now they not only have rigorous data backing those ideas, they also now have identified starting points for informed action.

Checklist

Use this checklist to move through the presentation and communication of your findings and deliverables.

  • Organize all materials on a shared drive using a consistent naming protocol and file hierarchy.

  • Photograph or print the pages of this Guide, combine them into a PDF, and put the PDF at the top level of the shared folder so that anyone can review and follow your project history.

  • Create a presentation deck using your findings. Guidance is on the following pages. Below, find design details for creating an impactful presentation:

    • Use photos in your deck.
    • Use the presenter notes section to include details you will verbally present.
    • If necessary, create an appendix to include details or raw data.
    • Practice presenting your deck to Leadership and Stakeholders.
    • Show your work. Effective slides emphasize your talking points; avoid large amounts of text in your deck. Be present and conversational in your presentation; don’t just read your deck aloud to your audience.