Benefits of a Well-Constructed Client Brief
A well-constructed client brief is one that is concise, simple, organized, and fits the just-enough agile criteria (when it’s part of an agile process).
A well-constructed client brief:
Helps the team produce higher quality work more effectively, and in a more measurable manner.
Helps the team save time and money.
Helps communicate the value or the project to the client.
In a nutshell, the better the brief, the better the results.
The client brief is the most important piece of information that will be agreed upon by you and your client. Every other element of the project is essentially an extension of the client brief.
Agencies waste time and money when they have to develop a solution over and over again without any concrete direction. A poorly written client brief can almost guarantee that sort of outcome. Your project could end up looking like the infamous BFV.
When a brief is well-constructed, it drives the project, and all subsequent elements are more likely to go smoothly because the entire process is more efficient, and that’s good for you and your client.
What Makes an Effective Client Brief?
An effective brief does not have to be long or detailed. On the contrary, this usually indicates a poorly written one. Remember, briefs are called briefs because they are brief. The most effective ones have exceptional clarity and focus. It gives you and your client a clear understanding of what you expect to accomplish, while a bad brief is like the “infamous BFV.”
An efficient brief states clear objectives using concrete language as opposed to vague terms. If they are hard to define, you may start with a vague one and work your way into something more concrete. For example, if your client’s work is hampered by the speed of their inventory control system, they may list an objective may be: “To improve the speed of the inventory control system.” That’s pretty vague!
If you are going to augment the client’s system to meet the various objectives, you need more information. You may start with “improve the speed of the system,” but then you start asking additional questions to get to the specifics of the objective:
What level of improvement in speed do they hope to see? From what to what?
What is the business rationale for investing in this particular objective?
What will it do for their business?
How will it be quantified and measured?
At what level of improvement is the greatest ROI achieved?
You’re probably thinking, “That’s a lot of information to figure out for just one objective!” And you’re right. It is! The good news is, you don’t have to figure it all out at once. Remember, briefs are living documents. The key is to define the objectives as best you can and then refine them when more details become available. By the time these questions are answered, you’ll have a clearer idea of how the objective can be met.
By clearly defining the objectives, you establish the success criteria for the project. Therefore, it is the number one principle of writing an effective client brief.
But what does an effective brief look like?
I’m glad you asked. Start with the questions you need to answer. With a client brief, those questions are fairly consistent.
Composition of an Effective Client Brief
Begin your client brief by asking the following questions:
How will you and your client manage the project?
In terms of the project, where are they now?
Where do they want to be?
What do they want to do to get there?
Who do they (and you) need to talk to?
How will the client know if the project is a success?
What are the practicalities?
What approvals are needed to proceed?
These questions will become the section headings, and the answers will become the brief’s content.
Project Management
All common project data and contact information should be contained here.
Project name and type
Date
Company name (client)
Brand or variant (if applicable)
Client contact information (include all names/titles and contact details)
Your agency name and contact details
Where Are we Now?
Describe the current situation, any necessary background, and the primary issues the client is dealing with that have prompted the initiation of this project.
Where Do we Want to Be?
Describe the client’s objectives(s) for the project.
What Are we Doing to Get There?
Many projects have multiple components with multiple teams working on them. If you’re designing a system architecture, there may also be a UX design team involved. This is where you document the extra details that are relevant to your success on the project.
Who Do we Need to Talk To?
Every project has a target audience. These are the people with a direct stake in the project. It is often important to get responses from these groups before the project is designed, and after it is completed. Define the groups and prioritize them in terms of contact needed.
How Will we Know We've Succeeded?
You and your client need to establish what success will look like. To do this, you’ll have to answer the following questions for each of the objectives:
How will it be measured?
When will it be measured?
Who will measure it?
Knowing this information is essential. It is the only way to assess the client’s ROI.
What Are the Practicalities?
Practicalities is an odd term that refers to any project element not previously described that requires practical consideration in planning the project. They may be different for every client, but here are some common ones:
Key project milestones and delivery dates.
Booking dates or deadlines for associated internal/external activities.
Scheduling fit with other development or marketing activities. For example, is the client planning a marketing campaign for the roll-out of this project and does that campaign have a hard date by which the project must be ready?
Other considerations. This is often a place reserved for documenting constraints. Every client and every project will have different practicalities you’ll have to sift through before you can begin the project.
Approvals
This is the final piece of the client brief. Identify who has the authority to approve or verify the work you produce. This should be the same person or people who approve this brief prior to starting work on the project.
Let’s Recap!
Really? Already? Shouldn’t there be more to understanding what a well-formed client brief looks like and makes it effective?
No, not really. Here’s a quick (we could have used brief here, but we have so many briefs already) summary of the important topics we covered in this chapter:
The client brief is the most important piece of information on which you and your client will agree.
A client brief is brief. It’s designed for a specific purpose.
An effective brief states crystal clear objectives.
A brief’s objectives define its success criteria.
A client brief can almost write itself when you ask the right questions.
In the next chapter, we’ll look at how to gather the business requirements for a project. These typically become the objectives in the client brief when you ask: Where do we want to be?
