Why a short brief works
A long specification written before anyone has asked a question tends to describe a solution, not the problem. A short brief describes the problem in your own words, and the questions that follow fill in the rest. It also takes ten minutes instead of a week.
1. The task
What is done by hand today, how often, and by whom. Describe it the way you would explain it to a new colleague, including the annoying parts.
Example: "Every Monday, someone exports last week's orders from the shop and the payments from the bank, matches them in a spreadsheet and emails a summary to the owner. It takes about two hours."
2. The tools
Where the data lives: files, spreadsheets, applications, email. Name the actual tools and say whether they can export data, even if you are not sure.
Example: "Orders are in the shop's admin as CSV exports, payments come as a bank statement file, and the summary is a Google Sheet."
3. The result
What a good outcome looks like for you, and how you would check it is right. This is the part most briefs leave out, and the one that shapes the work most.
Example: "A summary in the same sheet every Monday morning, with unmatched payments listed separately so we can look at them."
4. The timing
When you need it, and why then. A fixed date, such as a busy season or a new hire starting, changes what is sensible to build first.
What you can leave out
- Which programming language or platform to use.
- A full specification or wireframes.
- Whether it is technically possible. That is the first thing the reply answers.
- Polish. Bullet points are fine.
Three short examples
Automation: "Requests arrive by email and someone retypes them into our tracking sheet, about thirty a week. We use Gmail and Google Sheets. We want each request in the sheet with its sender and date, and anything unclear flagged. Before the busy season in March."
Application: "Our stock list is a shared spreadsheet that four people edit, and counts get overwritten. Data is in Excel. We want one place where each item has a count and a history of changes, usable on two office computers. No fixed date."
AI tool: "We answer similar customer questions every day. Answers are in our help documents. We want a draft reply for each new question, with the document it came from, for a person to approve. Within two months."
What happens next
Send the four answers by email to futureinvoked@proton.me. We reply with questions, or with a scope and a quote. Nothing is built before both are agreed.
To see what kind of work fits, read about workflow automation, custom applications and AI tools with human review.