Discovery Sessions

A Discovery Session in Catalio is a structured, AI-guided conversation session linked to an Initiative that systematically walks a stakeholder through a series of discovery phases — from context confirmation through workflow analysis, friction probing, and requirement linking.

Discovery Sessions are the conversational complement to Journey capture. Where Journeys record what users do in a system, Discovery Sessions capture what stakeholders say about it — the institutional knowledge, tribal wisdom, and expert opinions that cannot be observed directly.

What a Discovery Session Does

A Discovery Session connects a Catalio Chat Conversation to an Initiative and tracks the AI’s progress through a structured discovery script. The AI guides the stakeholder through:

1. Confirming the context of the engagement
2. Deep-diving into specific user personas and their workflows
3. Walking through actual workflow steps
4. Probing for friction points and pain sources
5. Linking discovered friction to existing requirements
6. Quantifying the business impact of the issues uncovered

At each phase, the AI captures structured information and stores it within the Session record, enabling review, hand-off to other team members, and audit.

Key Fields

Discovery Phase Lifecycle

Discovery Sessions advance through seven phases:

context_confirmation
  → persona_deepdive
  → workflow_walkthrough
  → friction_probing
  → requirement_linking
  → impact_quantification
  → complete

context_confirmation — The AI verifies the Initiative context, the stakeholder’s role, and the systems in scope. This phase ensures both parties are aligned on what the session will cover.

persona_deepdive — The AI gathers detailed information about the user personas involved: who they are, what they do daily, and how they relate to the system being analyzed.

workflow_walkthrough — The stakeholder walks the AI through key workflows step by step. The AI captures these as potential Journey Steps and flags gaps for later capture.

friction_probing — The AI systematically asks about pain points, workarounds, and failure modes for each workflow area. This phase produces the raw material for friction classification.

requirement_linking — The AI proposes connections between discovered friction and existing Requirements or suggests new requirements where gaps exist.

impact_quantification — The AI helps the stakeholder estimate the business cost of key friction points: time lost per user per day, frequency of workflow execution, number of affected users.

complete — The session is finished. All captured information is available for review and export.

Relationship to Initiatives

Discovery Sessions are initiative-scoped: every Session must be linked to an Initiative. This ensures that all discovered knowledge is contextualized within the strategic engagement that motivated the discovery.

Multiple Discovery Sessions can be linked to a single Initiative — for example, one session per stakeholder or one per business domain. Start a Session from the Initiative detail page; the AI enters the first phase (context_confirmation) and advances as the conversation progresses.

Relationship to Chat Conversations

Each Discovery Session is backed by a Catalio Chat Conversation — the actual dialogue between the AI and the stakeholder. The Conversation stores the message history; the Discovery Session stores the structured metadata and phase progression.

This architecture allows you to:

• Navigate directly to the conversation transcript for any session
• Review AI-captured findings separately from the raw dialogue
• Hand off an in-progress session to another team member

What Discovery Sessions Produce

Well-conducted Discovery Sessions generate:

• Friction findings — Documented pain points with affected personas and workflow areas
• Requirement candidates — Potential new requirements or refinements to existing ones
• Journey seeds — Workflow descriptions that become the blueprint for formal Journey captures
• Change Proposals — AI-generated proposed changes to the requirements catalog

The output of a Discovery Session feeds directly into the Change Proposals review queue, which a team member can then accept, modify, or dismiss.

Best Practices

Prepare the stakeholder in advance.

Send a brief agenda before the session. Stakeholders who know what to expect provide more detailed and accurate answers. The six phases take 45-90 minutes for a typical workflow area.

Focus on one domain per session.

Don’t try to cover an entire application in one session. Limit each session to one functional area or one primary persona’s workflows. Depth beats breadth.

Record the session externally when possible.

While Catalio captures the structured output, a separate recording of the conversation provides a richer record for post-session review.

Advance phases deliberately.

Each phase has a natural completion point. Resist the urge to rush to friction_probing before workflow_walkthrough is complete — the phases build on each other.

Follow up within 48 hours.

Review the Change Proposals generated by the session within two days, while the session context is still fresh. Proposals that sit unreviewed for weeks lose their relevance.

Relationships at a Glance

Next Steps

• Create an Initiative — Start a strategic engagement before launching sessions
• Capture Journeys — Convert session workflow walkthroughs into formal Journeys
• Review Change Proposals — Act on AI-discovered requirement candidates

Pro Tip: The most valuable Discovery Sessions are with the people who know where the bodies are buried — the 15-year veterans who have memorized all the workarounds. Schedule your most experienced SMEs for Discovery Sessions, not just the process owners who read from documentation.

Support

• Documentation: Continue reading about Journeys and Initiatives
• In-App Help: The AI assistant guides you through the Discovery Session phases
• Email: support@catalio.ai
• Community: Share discovery facilitation techniques with other Catalio users