Realise your project's maximum potential through better project briefing
Realise your project's maximum potential through better project briefing
In this article we will be sharing our process of starting a new project and tools that we use to help you create a better project brief.
Before we begin work on a project we create a detailed and thorough project plan. This includes the amount of work, timeline, critical reviews, interaction with key stakeholders and costs.
In order to achieve an accurate Project Plan we need a good Project Brief. That sounds simple right?! You might be surprised that 2 in 3 projects we discuss either have a bad brief, an incomplete brief, or no brief at all. This can have an impact on how smoothly the project starts, or can even make a project unviable.
As consultants, we need to have a good understanding of the company we’re working with, the project we’ll be working on, and any other goals or objectives we are working towards. To do this, we have a simple 3 step process we take our clients through to ensure that both parties are on the same page and ready to begin work together.
Project Assessment
Before creating the brief, we encourage our potential clients to have a 15 minute project assessment via call or Google Meets.
We have created a template with 10 key questions that we ask during this call. Our aim is to understand if the following:
Do we have everything that the project requires? This includes the skills, tools and availability to complete the project in the given time frame.
Is there a conflict of interest between this project and any others we may currently be working on?
Is the project well defined and planned? We link you with our network of business planners to help you creating a more solid proposition.
What structure and size of company are we working with? Are we working with a start up with very few people involved, or a big company with lots of stakeholders involved?
Project Assessment Insight
These short calls are a great way for us to find out more about your journey, and we really enjoy hearing more and understanding your objectives. Occasionally we help by connecting you with someone in our network to help in certain areas of a project, or to take on the project altogether if they are more suitable for a certain task.
Project Brief
The project brief provides us with key information that is essential for building a bespoke project proposal that is suitable for your project.
We have created some guidelines to help our clients build a thorough project brief including (but not limited to):
Company and project purpose and positioning
Business model and project Impact
Market, understanding of users, and opportunities identified
Challenges identified and requirements for the solution
Market projections and launching target
Product description
Unique value proposition
Project Brief Insight
Some of our clients refer to this exercise as invaluable, as it requires them to think in detail about their ideas and plans, which can help them consider new questions about their projects that can help to further define the scope of work.
Project Plan
Once we have a detailed understanding of the project in the form of a project brief, we are then able to provide a project plan that is tailored to you and your company. This comes in a form of a proposal and includes to-dos, objectives, key dates, costs and deliverables.
As with any R&D project, there is a level of risk involved that both parties must be aware of. There are circumstances during the development of the project that can affect the time-scale or/and outcome of the project. To cater for this, we break down our proposals into ‘sprints’ or ‘phases’, typically lasting between one to four weeks. Each phase can be considered a “mini-project” with its own defined deliverables and outcomes.
Project Plan Insight
This proposal is reviewed after each phase or sprint, ensuring flexibility and adaptability that is essential for any Research & Development (R&D) project.
We aim to support our clients throughout the duration of the project and past it’s launch. This allows us to establish long term relationships based on collaboration and a deep understanding of the project.
We hope this guide has been useful and gives you an insight into successfully defining and starting a project. If you have any questions or thoughts, we’d love to hear from you! Simply drop us a comment below, or email us at mail@makersdepartment.com
Are you interested in working with us? Click the button below to book your free project assessment!