The Prep That Actually Matters Isn't a Formal Spec
The instinct before a discovery workshop is to produce something polished: a process document, a requirements list, a slide deck defending how things are done today. None of that is what makes a gap analysis productive. What actually moves the needle is much simpler: someone from each department who can explain, in plain terms, what they do all day.
Three Things, Per Department
Ask each relevant team to show up ready to cover three things: the purpose (what this department is actually for), the people (who's in it, who's in charge), and the story (what a normal day or process actually looks like, start to finish).
Then walk that story through four lenses (a hand-drawn flowchart is genuinely enough):
- Inputs: who sends requests, through what system, what triggers action, and what information is on hand when it lands.
- Process: what actually happens to that information: what gets decided, what gets produced.
- Outputs: what comes out the other end, and where it goes next.
- Wishes: the pain points that eat the most time, and what "better" would actually look like to the people doing the work.
What to Actually Bring
The files a team already uses today, spreadsheets, exports, whatever exists, in a shared folder is more useful than a rewritten summary of them. The same goes for the reports and documents a team expects a new system to produce: bring an example in whatever format it exists in now. That becomes the real input for the "what does this need to output" conversation, instead of a description of it.
One thing worth saying plainly: nobody is grading the current process. It clearly works; the business is running on it. The goal of the exercise is better tools for what's already being done, not a verdict on how it's done today.
The Takeaway
The best discovery prep isn't a document, it's a person from each team who can draw, literally on paper if needed, what comes in, what they do with it, what goes out, and what they wish were easier. Everything a gap analysis needs follows from that.