Briefs are a tax. We don't pay them.
The brief is where ambition goes to get hedged. We replaced ours with a single sentence and a working build, and the projects got better.
A brief is a contract written before anyone knows what they want. It exists to make the unknown feel managed. It almost never survives contact with a real build.
What we ask instead.
One sentence: what has to be true about this product by the first demo? If a team can’t answer that in a sentence, the project isn’t ready — and no fifteen-page brief will make it ready.
The length of the brief is inversely proportional to the clarity of the idea. — Something we say too often
The rest is discovered in the build, not negotiated in a document. Wireframes get debated for weeks; a running screen gets a decision in an afternoon.
- A brief defers the hard question. “We’ll figure the flow out later” means later costs more.
- A build forces it. You can’t fake a working screen, so the real disagreements surface early.
That’s the whole method. Skip the tax, ship the thing, decide from what’s in front of you.