Vent: My whole team missed the client's real goal on that Denver project

We spent 3 weeks building a complex dashboard because the brief said 'data visibility', but the client just wanted a simple weekly email. I learned to ask 'what will you do with this info' before starting. Do you think the failure is on us for not asking, or on them for a bad brief?

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walker.michael6mo ago

Yeah, asking "what will you do with this info" is the key. I built a whole reporting tool once before finding out they just printed it to PDF for one meeting.

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victor_davis176mo ago

Ugh, I've built SO many "one meeting" PDFs myself.

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zarapalmer5mo ago

Built a custom tracking spreadsheet once with color coding and pivot tables for a client. Turns out they wanted it so they could print one page and tape it to their monitor. Three days of formatting for a sticky note. These days I ask clients to literally walk me through what their Tuesday morning looks like when they use the deliverable. Saves everyone a lot of time and embarrassment.

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