How to write a brief an engineer can put a price on
Half a page written this way gets you a fixed number. Ten pages written the other way gets you 'it depends'.
- 01
Describe a Tuesday, not a feature.
What happens, in order, from the moment the work arrives to the moment it is finished. Features written as features hide the steps that make them expensive.
- 02
Name the systems by name.
Not "our accounting software" — Xero, and which plan. Half of what makes integration work cheap or ruinous is which specific product, and whether it has an API worth the name.
- 03
Say how many.
in the PDF
- 04
Say who touches it.
in the PDF
- 05
Say what happens when it goes wrong today.
in the PDF
- 06
Say what you have already tried.
in the PDF
- 07
Name the real constraint.
in the PDF
- 08
Say what success is, in a sentence someone could check.
in the PDF
6 more checks in the PDF
The complete checklist — every check with the reasoning under it, the closing note, and the other 12 documents — comes as one PDF.