There is a post related to the #NoEstimates discussion titled, Introducing Deliberate Discovery. It's one of those interesting topics that doesn't use the same words across most domains.
The word Plan in our domain is a Strategy for the successful completion of a program. The Integrated Master Plan (IMP) says what steps need to be taken to increase the maturity of the deliverables over the life cycle of the project. Here's the elements of project success at a minimum. The IMP/IMS is one. But risk, packages of work, the delievrables, Measures of Performance, budget spreads for the work, and other lower level artifacts are used as well.
So when the term deliberate discovery is used, in the domain processes above it means that the needed capabilities the project will produce for the customer are stated up front and what needs to be discovered is how to produce those capabilities through tetchnical and operational requirements, the actual technical artifacts that deliver these capabilities, and the staff and processes to produce them.
Certainly new capabilities can be discovered along the way, but this would be in addition to the needed capabilities for the success of the project.
