Practice
The 90-minute kickoff that replaced our 40-page brief
Long briefs are a record of a conversation nobody had. We replaced ours with six questions and a whiteboard.
By Ilias Bat
5 min read
Written by
Ilias Bat
We used to write briefs of thirty to forty pages. They were thorough, well-formatted, and largely unread. The client signed them because signing was the next step, not because the document had changed their mind about anything.
Six questions
The kickoff is ninety minutes, everyone who can veto the work in the room, and six questions on a wall.
Who is this for, specifically enough to name three of them? What do they currently do instead? What has to be true in twelve months for this to have been worth it? What are we deliberately not doing? Who has killed a project like this before, and why? And what does the person paying need to show their board?
Why it works better
A long brief records a conversation. A short kickoff forces the conversation to actually happen, in front of the people who disagree. Most projects that fail late were arguments that were never had early.
The output is two pages, written the same day, circulated within twenty-four hours. If nobody objects in three working days, it is the brief.
What we lost
Some clients want the thick document, usually because procurement requires it. We write it, but afterwards, from the two pages. It is a record, not a decision.