Check where discovery can create false confidence

A process map can look complete because the boxes connect, even when the underlying decisions have not been tested.

Workshops on their own usually produce the intended process. People simplify steps they know well and forget the artefacts they use automatically. Walk through records and screens, then compare more than one completed case.

The loudest participant may be treated as the process owner for every stage. Management may understand policy, operators know the actual handling, and support staff deal with correction. Review each section with the role that performs it.

Copying the existing product into a new technology stack is another common outcome. Screens, fields and permissions are easy to inventory, so old constraints survive while the private work around them is missed.

Designing only the successful path produces attractive prototypes and expensive surprises when retries, reversals, changed approvals and partial integration failures arrive during build.

A discovery document can also become a catalogue of every possible variation without making a decision. Mark rules as confirmed, proposed, unresolved or outside scope. Give unresolved items an owner and review date.

Feature requests collected before the work is understood need another pass. They are evidence, though the proposed solution may be attached to a different problem. Ask what event prompts the request and what the person cannot currently see or do.

Leave uncertainty visible. If two teams disagree about ownership or a rule has no source, mark the gap instead of drawing a guessed transition that will later look approved.

Discovery approval has a date and a scope. Policies change, integrations behave differently under load, and proposed processes can prove awkward during testing. Keep the map connected to decisions and revisions so the team can update it without losing why a change was made.