When a significant website or system project goes off the rails, the post-mortem usually lands in a predictable place. The agency missed deadlines, the developers misunderstood the platform, or the budget ran dry before the finish line.
Business owners look at the final product, point to where it missed the mark, and decide the delivery team was the problem.
More often than not, that diagnosis is backwards.
The build didn’t fail because the developers were careless. The build failed because it faithfully executed a brief that was fundamentally broken months before anyone wrote a line of code.
The difference between a task list and a direction
Here is a common scenario I see across established mid-sized businesses. In fact, just over the last 3 months, I’ve come across many examples like this…
You decide it is time to upgrade your digital presence. You gather your leadership team, scribble down a list of frustrations with the current site, and draft a request for proposal.
It reads something like this: Build a new ecommerce site with better filtering, a modern layout, and a faster checkout.
To an internal team, that sounds like a clear set of requirements. To an agency, it sounds like an invitation to build exactly what you asked for: whether your customers actually need it or not. That is a build request. It focuses entirely on mechanics and features.
Now compare that with a real brief: Help returning trade customers find the right replacement parts and complete repeat orders with less hesitation.
Notice what changed. The second version does not mention a checkout button or a layout grid. Instead, it defines the human behaviour you are trying to change. It gives a software team a North Star instead of a shopping list.
Why good businesses fall into the trap
Well-run companies with ten to a hundred million in revenue do not end up with vague briefs through incompetence. They end up there because of a standard gap in the organisational chart.
You have a head of operations, a chief financial officer, and sales directors who know your physical products inside and out. But you likely do not have a full-time digital product lead sitting on the executive team.
When it comes time to buy software or build a customer portal, leadership steps into unfamiliar territory. Without an internal translator who speaks both business strategy and product design, the default is to default to features. You ask for what you can see: menus, forms, and pages: rather than the problem you actually need solved.
A brief that is just a list of features almost always misses the three questions that actually decide whether the project succeeds:
- Exactly who is this for in their daily reality?
- What specific friction are we removing for them?
- What measurable change in behaviour tells us this worked?
If those answers are hazy before development starts, no amount of engineering talent can save the project downstream.
The cost asymmetry of getting it wrong
This is where the economics of software development catch people by surprise.
Getting a brief right is the cheapest part of any digital initiative. It requires a few focused conversations, some honest debate about priorities, and a clear definition of success before a single dollar is committed to development.
Getting it wrong, on the other hand, is staggeringly expensive.
When a project is built on an unclear brief, you usually find out six months and fifty thousand dollars later: right when the staging site goes live and you realise it does not quite fit how your customers actually buy. Fixing structural misalignment after code is written means expensive rework, delayed launches, and internal frustration.
Getting the foundation straight
If you are preparing to commission a website redesign, a customer portal, or an internal system upgrade this year, resist the urge to jump straight to vendor pitches and feature lists.
Take a step back. Spend your time defining the actual problem and the human behaviour you need to influence.
Get the brief right before you ever invite an agency to build it. It is the single best way to protect your budget and your sanity.
At Relab, we offer a few slots every month, where in 30 minutes, you’ll walk away knowing where your project is exposed, what to fix first, and whether your current plan has any gaps worth worrying about. No charge, no pitch, no pressure.
If you’d like to book a spot, you can find availability in this link.
