Revisit Project Brief and Project Index

[amenity]

Listened to this episode of Build this weekend and it got me thinking about our Project Brief.

This product team writes a “One-Pager” composed of 5 parts:

• The Story - hooks listeners; explains why the project matters, jobs-to-be-done-ish (this is meant to evolve as project goes on)
• Background & Context - expand on the story; organizational context, customer insights including direct quotes from users
• Goals - Impact this project can have, success metrics Requirements and Constraints - scope, restrictions you’re working with, e.g. “Can’t impact _____‘s workflow,” known roadblocks
• Timebox - How long should this take to build; optional section w/ caveats for more complex projects
• Concepts and references - Helpful references; e.g. other solutions, screenshots of Slack convos, customer’s original request, anything too long for the one-pager that can exist as a separate doc

It's pretty close to our Product Brief, maybe just ... briefer. 🐁🙂

Last week @TracyLinder pointed out that we have three Project/Product Index templates in this repo, so we'll definitely want to consolidate and match up

• "New Application" service request
• Project Index template
• Project Brief

My thinking in this very moment is:

• After #1375, fine tune Knack form as needed so that we're gathering all the info we need for prioritization
• Do away with Product Brief in favor of a more substantial Project Index & update template accordingly

[amenity]

FWIW, I'm feeling pretty strongly that writing and maintaining a Product Brief is too much overhead. I'd be very satisfied with clean Index (or Project/ Product issue) issues with regular status updates, since these can directly feed into the new DTS website and, dream-state, a regular DTS newsletter.

[johnclary]

@amenity +1

[johnclary]

@amenity i started a doc for refactoring our Index templates

[amenity]

@johnclary looks great. I'd also like to include a standardized footer, something like:

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[johnclary]

great—added to doc.