What should we look for in a brief?

[philipjcowan]

Last night I received an email from a former student. The email is, essentially, a brief for a website.

As we have to consider three possible briefs for our final project, I thought it would be worthwhile sharing this one with you all. I have painted it up in CSS to make the email a bit more readable; you can see it here (http://www.watest.co.uk/philip/pitch.html).

Is this a good brief or not? Does she sound like a good client or not? Maybe those people who have more experience in this field could advise me (and others) as to what we should look for in a brief.

My initial thoughts is that this could be an unrealistic client with very high expectations.

What do you think?

[Stewart]

Looks interesting - Quick look at the inspiration site 'Top Table' and you see a business which has been in existence at least 9 years, has significant capital backing and a sizable team responsible for development and maintenance.

The functionality and feature list is a good representation of Top Tables capability but I'm sure at the start they had a site which was far more simplistic.

The first step from my experience would be to understand more of the background face to face, is this a hobby idea or a venture where investment will be sort. Once this is better understood you'd be able to give better advice and provide a reasoned answer. Key questions for me at an initial meeting would be:

- What's the elevator pitch
- Business model
- Timescales
- Finance
- Other resources
- Relevant experience
- Expectations

With these areas better understood you could prepare to fight or flight !