Discovery-driven planning

Discovery-driven planning is a planning technique first introduced in a Harvard Business Review article by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan in 1995.

Gunther and Macmillan argue that it is unhelpful to judge a plan's correctness by how close outcomes come to projections when operating in arenas with significant amounts of uncertainty.

Discovery-driven planning assumes that plan parameters may change as new information is revealed. As opposed to conventional planning where projects are funded upfront, discovery-driven planning releases funding based on the accomplishment of key milestones. Additional funding is made available predicated on reasonable expectations for future success.

Gunther and Macmillan also argue that conventional project management tools such as stage-gate models are not well suited for the uncertainty of innovation-oriented projects.

Discovery-driven planning has been widely used in entrepreneurship curricula and has been cited by Steve Blank as a foundational idea in the lean startup methodology. While the Lean Startup Method is perhaps more suited for start-up ventures, discovery-driven planning may be better suited to potential innovation in larger corporations, where each innovation must achieve significant profits to be material to the corporation's growth.