Glossary
What is a time-boxed discovery?
A deliberate learning step taken instead of a decision: a goal, optionally the questions to answer, a time-box, and a target date on which it must conclude with recorded findings and an explicit decision.
The ending is what separates discovery from research. On the target date the demand is planned, re-decided with what was learned, parked, or declined — a reason is required to park or decline, and the findings stay on the record. A spike with no end date is not a smaller commitment; it is an unbounded one.
When to run a discovery instead of committing
When the uncertainty is about value or feasibility — nobody can say whether this is worth doing, or whether the approach works at all — a discovery is the correct next step, because committing would be a bet dressed as a plan. When the uncertainty is about delivery detail, it is not: unclear scope, an unowned dependency or a missing estimate are things a plan resolves, and sending them to discovery just delays the same conversation.
The tell is what a good outcome would change. If the answer changes whether you do the work at all, discover. If it only changes how, plan.
What makes a discovery time-boxed rather than open-ended
Three things: a goal stated as the question being answered, a target date, and the requirement that findings are recorded and a decision is taken on that date. Without the third, the box is decorative — the spike quietly extends, and by week six it has consumed more capacity than the commitment it was avoiding.
The decision at the end is allowed to be any of the four exits, including declining the demand outright. A discovery that concludes "not worth doing, here is why" has done its job better than one that concludes with a plan nobody believes.
Related terms
- Vertical work — A delivery stream owned by a single team or discipline that produces end-to-end value within its own lane — frontend, backend, data, mobile, platform.
- Horizontal work — A cross-cutting concern that pulses into several delivery streams at specific gates — security review, legal, compliance, design, accessibility, privacy.
- Readiness (three-state) — A planning dimension has three states, not two: not assessed, assessed and nothing found, and assessed with items.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.
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