Writing briefs that get you the work you wanted

When a project disappoints, the post-mortem usually focuses on execution. More often the fault is upstream: the brief described what to build rather than what needed to be true, and everything downstream inherited that error.

Describe the problem, not the artefact

"We need a new website" is a solution. "Our enquiry volume has dropped forty percent since the product line expanded and prospects tell us they cannot find what they need" is a problem — and it might not be solved by a new website at all. The second brief gives your partner room to disagree usefully. The first only lets them comply.

Say what success looks like

Vague success criteria produce work that is impossible to evaluate. Be specific about what should change and how you will know. "More leads" is not measurable. "Qualified enquiries from the manufacturing sector, up from the current baseline, measured over a quarter" is something both sides can aim at.

Include the constraints you would rather not mention

The budget ceiling, the immovable launch date, the stakeholder who will veto anything blue, the legacy system nobody is allowed to touch. These surface eventually. Surfacing them at the start means the proposed approach accounts for them, rather than being rebuilt around them in month three.

• What has already been tried, and why it did not work
• Who has final approval, and what they care about
• What is genuinely fixed versus merely assumed
• What you would consider a failure, not just a success

A good brief is uncomfortable to write. That discomfort is the work of thinking clearly, done early, where it is cheap.