Playbooks
Briefs, budgets, discovery sprints and handovers — how to buy, and run, agency work well.
Status updates clients actually read
The one-screen weekly note format that kills the 40-slide deck: shipped, next, blocked, decisions needed — with working demos instead of jargon and metrics in context.
The first two weeks with an agency: a client's field guide
What actually happens in the first fortnight of an agency engagement: access checklists, stakeholder mapping, decision calendars, and how week-one demos become possible.
Scope change without drama
Scope creep is a process failure wearing an intent costume. Distinguishing discovery from creep, a change-request micro-process, and scripts for hard talks.
Weekly demos: the habit that runs our projects
Weekly demos as a project operating system: the format that forces progress, recording etiquette, async viewing, demo-driven scope discovery and braver clients.
Reading agency contracts: IP, liability and the licence traps
A plain-English tour of the contract clauses that matter in creative engagements: IP assignment vs licence, portfolio rights, liability caps, kill fees, warranty windows.
Aligning stakeholders without design by committee
How to keep design decisions fast with many stakeholders: decision mapping, demo-based alignment, the input-vs-decision distinction, and rescuing stalled review loops.
Writing an analytics implementation plan before you tag anything
A measurement plan decides what to track; an implementation plan decides how. Naming, property hygiene, consent mode, staging QA and the 30-day calibration.
Design system buy-in: the internal sales playbook
Design systems don't fail at build; they fail at buy-in. The cost-of-inconsistency maths, the pilot-component strategy, and the executive story that lands.
Skip the RFP: a better way to buy creative work
RFPs select for proposal-writing, not building. A better process: a short 'request for conversations', a shortlist of three, paid discovery with two.
How to give design feedback that speeds the work up
A client's guide to design feedback: reaction versus direction, the 'what problem does this solve' script, and comments that speed the work up.
Buying accessible software: a procurement playbook
A procurement playbook for accessibility: brief language that binds, evaluating claims beyond the VPAT, acceptance criteria that bite, and keeping standards after launch.
Handover without the hangover: documentation your team will read
A clean agency-to-client handover in practice: documentation people actually read, runbooks that run, training that sticks, and who owns the keys afterwards.
Running a content model workshop before the design starts
A two-hour workshop format that produces a real CMS content model — index cards, cardinality questions, naming rules — before anyone draws a single page.