What is the difference between a brief and a technical specification?

The brief is filled out by the customer before work begins and answers the question “why and for whom.” The technical specification is written by the contractor based on the brief and answers “what exactly are we doing”: structure, requirements, acceptance criteria. Writing a technical specification without a brief means recording your guesses.

Is there a universal brief?

No, and attempts to do so end up with a form of sixty questions, half of which are not related to the task. The customer does not fill it out. It’s easier to keep several short forms for different types of work.

Who should fill out the brief?

Customer. If a brief is filled out by a performer, he writes down his assumptions about someone else’s business, and they will emerge at the acceptance stage as a divergence of expectations. You can help with wording, but you can’t be responsible for the customer.

What to do if the customer does not want to fill out the brief?

Fill it out together, by voice, in one call, and send it for confirmation. This is longer than getting a finished document, but faster than two rounds of edits due to misaligned expectations.

How many questions should there be in the brief?

Twenty to twenty-five is the working range. Less does not close the task, no more is filled. If there are forty questions, it means you are trying to complete two different jobs with one form.

Do you need a brief for a small project?

Necessary, but short. Even for a one-day task, it is worth recording what is considered a finished result and who accepts it: it is these two points that most often diverge.

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StrategySeptember 5, 20268 min

Which brief is needed for which task: five forms and when to take which one

Briefs for a website, design, SMM, video and general marketing solve different problems, and there is no universal one. I analyze how they differ, what questions each one contains, and why the brief is always filled out by the customer.

The question “give me a brief” sounds like there is only one brief. In practice, there are five of them, they ask different things, and substituting the wrong form costs about one round of edits.

A universal brief is a form with sixty questions, half of which are not about your task. Nobody fills it out, and that’s the problem.

1. Five forms and what each one covers

Form	When to take	Main block
Marketing	Entire campaign or collaboration	Business, goals, audience, budget
To the site	Before development assessment	Website purpose, structure, integrations
For design	Logo, corporate identity, creatives	Limitations, formats, edit circles
On SMM	Transfer of social networks to the contractor	Purpose, tone, access, who is responsible
On the roller	Filming or editing video	Site, rights, markings

The third column explains why the forms are not interchangeable. Questions about the rights to music and the consent of people in the frame are meaningless in the brief for the site, and questions about integration with CRM are in the brief for the video. However, missing any of them in their form is expensive.

2. Filled out by the customer, and this is not a formality

The most common deviation from the rules: the contractor fills out the brief himself, “so as not to burden the client.” The result is a document in which his own assumptions about someone else's business are recorded.

Then these assumptions live as agreed upon and emerge at the reception in the form of “we meant something else.” Formally, there is a brief. In fact, he did not do his job - he did not transfer knowledge from the one who has it to the one who will do it.

A compromise that works: fill it out together by voice in one call and send it in writing for confirmation. Longer than getting a finished file, but faster than two rounds of edits.

3. “I don’t know” is the answer.

Customers often skip questions to which there is no sure answer, and they end up with a form with gaps, which the contractor fills in with guesses.

The correct way is to write “I don’t know” directly. Then it becomes a visible agenda item: the issue is clarified before the start, and is not revealed on the mock-ups.

This is especially true for the issue of success metrics. “I don’t know how we will measure it” is an honest and very useful answer: it means that the first thing we need to do is agree on this.

4. Three points without which the brief does not work

A deadline linked to an event. Not “by the end of the month,” but “by the opening of the season” or “by the launch of advertising.” The date moves first for no reason.

Budget with a range. Failure to disclose a budget results in estimates that do not match expectations and in reworking the proposal.

One name at the reception. The point that looks bureaucratic and saves the most. Reconciliation by a committee of five ends with an average solution or endless circles.

5. What happens after the brief

The brief is an input, not a result. Then, based on it, a technical specification is written, which describes the solution: what sections, what requirements, what acceptance criteria.

For the site this link looks like this: brief filled out by the customer, then appears Technical specifications for landing page, and only then does the work begin. How to write the second part - in analysis of technical specifications.

6. About the size of the form

The working range is twenty to twenty-five questions. This is approximately an hour of filling that the customer is willing to spend.

If there are forty questions, you are almost certainly trying to cover two different jobs with one form - for example, strategy and production. It’s better to split them into two briefs and two conversations.

7. Summary

Five forms for five types of work, each filled out by the customer, “I don’t know” is written directly, and three points - deadline, budget and one name at the reception - are required everywhere.

All together it takes an hour on the customer’s side and saves from one to three rounds of edits. This is the only part of the process that I know of with this ratio.

All five forms lie in templates section. Related materials: Technical specifications for landing page, agency or freelancer, generator technical specifications for contractor, analysis of the contractor's CP.