6 Parts to Project Briefs: Minimize the Reworks and Redos

Your vision is that you delegate projects to people and they just get done right the first time.

The dilemma is your team gets into a project only to find that eight weeks in at the initial design review, there is a serious rework that needs to happen. They felt the project was straightforward and that documenting or creating a project brief was not needed and would cause extra unneeded work.

The case of a business not using a project brief

The case is development started of a leather good to be sold to a major retailer, without using a project brief.

The Design team was told a new, slightly smaller travel bag needed development. They were given dimensions, color options, logo placement, the typical things that get discussed in a kick-off. However, some major details were discussed prior within managements and the vendor and not fully communicated with the team. This project ended up being for a commercial purpose, not for the regular stores or ecommerce channel. Because of this, quantity and price were significantly different from the norm.

The development team was not given the quantity that would be needed, but it was assumed to be in line with other average projects, no one thought more of it. Price point was not talked about either, as it was assumed to be in line with the average travel bag. It turns out, the price point has to be considerably lower than what a normal leather good project is for the business. So much so that new, comparable material sourcing is required along with less expensive packaging, which involves the packaging engineer, the list goes on with who now needs to be involved with little to no time. For these team members to get involved, it is going to cut into other projects they are working on.

The result is now supply chain needs to figure out how they will source this amount of material on top of how they will hit the price point and the project is already eight weeks underway. Design will have to go back and sample and test the newly found materials, along with the other teams involved. This is a costly mistake, as the rework required and lost time cannot be made up.

The solution is using a project brief prior to the start of the project.

The purpose of having a project brief or document is not to make more work, it’s the opposite. It’s used to cut down the back-and-forth one-off conversations, minimize changes and reworks, develop a reference tool for all involved, and essentially create a blueprint of the project, when you have everyone together and brainstorming can occur.

Top items to discuss and document in the project brief:

1. Who: Define who the project is going to and the channel(s). Who is the audience or customer? Refer back to your customer journey to be very clear on this. Additionally, think about who will need to be involved. Will you need contractors or consultants? Do they require significant lead times? Define the departments involved upfront to ensure they work this into their priorities.

2. What: Define what the end result is going to be. This should lead into a tech pack or tech sheet of some sort with more details but be clear enough here that everyone can get a high-level visual. Think about everything from materials to sourcing, to software to packaging requirements, and logistics to delivery.

3. Where: Define the production location, selling location, sourcing may be noted here as well. Is there capacity during the time production will be required?

4. Why: State the reason the project has to be completed. Include enough detail so it’s not overwhelming, but each participant understands the why. This assists in brainstorming ideas to have a clear, concise definition here.

5. When: Define the due dates along the way. A launch calendar could help here if it’s a multiple-step and multiple department project. Identify the major milestones or goals and work backward to ensure each team has ample time and dependencies/potential roadblocks are identified now. They will come up along the way but if a few minutes are dedicated upfront to thinking about this now, many of them will found early enough.

6. How: What is the actual plan to complete? Who needs to do what and what resources are needed? Consider budget as well in these tasks.

Once the project is completed or launched, this document will be helpful in taking a step backward and reviewing the successes and weaknesses or failures for future improvement.

Give this a try the next time a project comes up and comment on how it went or ask a question!

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Written by Nicole Hullihen on May 23rd, 2021