How to Brief a Project When You Do Not Know What Is Wrong
A practical guide to writing a brief that gets you a correct answer rather than a fast one, including what to bring and what to leave out.
THE SHORT ANSWER
Write the brief around the symptom and the constraint, not the solution. Describe what is happening, what it costs you, and what cannot change. Naming a deliverable too early locks in an answer before anyone has checked the question.
The most expensive briefs are often the confident ones. They name a deliverable, a channel and a deadline, and they are frequently solving the third-most-important problem in the business because that is the one that became visible first.
Bring these five things
- The symptom, described plainly: what you notice, how often, and who complains.
- The number attached to it: revenue, hours, churn, cost per order. Any real number beats an adjective.
- What you have already tried, and what happened.
- The constraints that genuinely cannot move: budget ceiling, compliance, a contract, a launch date.
- Who has to agree before anything ships.
Leave these out for now
Leave out the proposed solution, the tool shortlist, and the competitor screenshot. Not because they are worthless, but because they anchor everyone to a conclusion before the evidence is in. Keep them; share them in the second conversation.
A messy brief is data. A confident wrong brief is a budget with a countdown.
What if we genuinely only need a website?
Then we will confirm that quickly and scope it. A diagnosis that concludes 'your instinct was right' is a good outcome, not a wasted one: it converts a guess into a decision you can defend.
Should we get multiple quotes first?
Get multiple conversations first. Quotes for an unspecified problem are not comparable, because each supplier is silently pricing a different assumption about what the work is.
What if we do not know the number?
Say so, and say how you would find out. 'We think churn is high but nobody tracks it' is itself a finding: it tells everyone where to look first.
GO DEEPER
Reading is free. The diagnosis is a conversation.
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The Business Audit: What It Is, What It Finds, When to Run One
A business audit is a structured examination of how a company actually works, across its numbers, workflows, brand and customer journey, to find the constraint behind the symptoms before money is spent on a fix.
NOTE · THINGS WE NOTICEDThe Problem Behind the Problem