The reason most quotes take two weeks and still come back vague is not the agency — it is the brief. After scoping 50+ projects, we know exactly which 10 sections turn a sales conversation into a fixed quote inside 48 hours. This is that template.
What is a brief actually for?
A brief has one job: give an agency enough information to commit to a fixed price and a fixed timeline. It is not a marketing document, a vision statement or a pitch deck. The shorter and more concrete it is, the faster you get a real number.
Our internal target: any brief that hits all 10 sections below gets a line-item fixed quote inside 48 business hours. Briefs that do not hit them generate "we need a discovery call" replies — which is fine, but slower.
What are the 10 sections that matter?
- One-line product description
- Primary user and their job-to-be-done
- The core workflow, in 3-7 steps
- Must-have features (a numbered list of 6-12 items)
- Explicitly out-of-scope features
- Constraints (tech, compliance, budget, timeline)
- Existing assets (designs, code, brand, data)
- Success metric for the first 90 days
- Decision-maker and decision speed
- Budget envelope (yes, really)
What does each section look like?
1. One-line product description
Format: "[Product] helps [user] do [job] without [the painful old way]." Example: "OrderShip helps small-batch coffee roasters in Nepal accept wholesale orders from cafes without phone-call chaos."
2. Primary user and their job-to-be-done
Pick one user. Not "buyers and sellers and admins". The one who pays and the one who uses are sometimes different — name both, but the brief defaults to the user, not the buyer.
3. The core workflow, in 3-7 steps
Walk us through what the user does on a typical day. We will scope to this workflow, not to a list of screens. Example:
- Cafe owner browses a roaster's catalogue.
- Adds bags to a cart, picks delivery date.
- Checks out with eSewa or invoice.
- Gets a confirmation SMS and a downloadable PO.
- Roaster sees the order in their dashboard, marks shipped.
4. Must-have features (6-12 items, numbered)
Write them as user actions, not technical components. "User can reset password via email" is a feature. "Use Cognito" is not. Aim for 6-12 items for an MVP. If you have 30, you are not at MVP — read our SaaS MVP cost breakdown.
5. Explicitly out-of-scope features
This is the section that earns you a fast quote. List what you are not shipping in v1. Example: "No native mobile app. No multi-language. No public API. No admin role beyond a single super-admin."
6. Constraints
| Constraint | Example |
|---|---|
| Tech | "Backend must be Django (existing team). Frontend open." |
| Hosting | "Cannot use AWS Singapore for data-residency reasons." |
| Compliance | "PCI-aware, SOC2 not required at MVP." |
| Timeline | "Must launch before quarterly board meeting on Oct 1." |
| Budget | "USD 35-50k all-in for v1, monthly retainer post-launch up to USD 12k." |
7. Existing assets
Tell us what we are not building from scratch. Brand kit? Figma file? Existing codebase to extend? Customer-discovery interviews? Existing data we need to migrate? Each one shortens our scoping time.
8. Success metric for the first 90 days
Pick one. "100 paying customers", "USD 8,000 MRR", "60% week-two retention". Without this we cannot tell you which features actually matter — and neither can you.
9. Decision-maker and decision speed
Who signs the SOW? Who answers product questions during build? Are they one person or two? What is their average response time to Slack? If decisions take a week, the timeline doubles — and we will say so in the quote.
10. Budget envelope
Founders hate sharing this and agencies hate quoting without it. Share a range: "USD 25-40k for MVP, USD 6-10k/month after". This is not negotiating against yourself — it is letting us tell you what is buildable inside your envelope. If your budget is 1/3 of what the project needs, we tell you immediately instead of three quote revisions later.
What does a finished brief look like?
One page. Maybe two. Bullet points, not paragraphs. Numbered must-haves, numbered out-of-scope. Total reading time for the agency should be under 8 minutes. If you cannot fit it on two pages, the project is not scoped tightly enough yet.
What turns a brief into a fixed quote on our end?
When we receive a complete brief, here is what happens inside 48 hours:
- Hour 0-4: A senior engineer and a project lead read the brief together.
- Hour 4-16: We build a feature-by-feature engineer-day estimate, with named risks for each.
- Hour 16-32: A peer-review pass by a second senior on the estimate.
- Hour 32-44: We write the SOW — fixed price per milestone, named engineers, change-request clause, IP terms.
- Hour 44-48: We send it, with a 30-minute call slot pre-booked.
What if I cannot answer one of the 10 sections?
Submit it anyway. The sections you skip become the agenda for the 30-minute scoping call. We would rather spend 30 minutes filling in section 8 with you than send a quote that turns out to be wrong because nobody talked about success metrics.
Free brief template
We publish a copy-paste brief template on our tools page. Fill it in, paste it into our quote form, and your quote arrives inside 48 hours.
What does a real example look like?
Here is an anonymised version of a brief that got a fixed quote from us in 36 hours:
- Product: A scheduling SaaS that helps physiotherapy clinics in Australia manage appointments without the no-show problem.
- Primary user: Clinic receptionist; secondary user, the physiotherapist.
- Workflow: (1) Receptionist creates client and books appointment. (2) System sends SMS confirmation. (3) System sends reminder 24h and 2h before. (4) Patient confirms or reschedules via SMS link. (5) Receptionist sees status on a daily dashboard.
- Must-haves: SMS via Twilio, calendar sync (Google + Apple), no-show flagging, Stripe deposit hold, simple reporting, 2 user roles.
- Out of scope: Native mobile app, multi-clinic franchising features, telehealth video, insurance billing.
- Constraints: Must be HIPAA-aware (US clients in future); hosted in Sydney for now; budget USD 38-55k for v1.
- Assets: Existing brand kit in Figma; no existing code.
- 90-day metric: 8 paying clinics, 60% confirmed-appointment rate via SMS.
- Decision-maker: Founder + clinical advisor; 24-hour Slack response.
- Budget: As above. Monthly retainer USD 6-10k post-launch.
That brief gave us everything we needed. We replied with a fixed USD 46,000 quote, an 11-week timeline, three named engineers and a designer. The clinic was live with paying customers 13 weeks later.
What pitfalls do we see in briefs?
- Confusing "must-have" with "would-be-nice" — if you cannot say which 3 features you would cut at gunpoint, you are not ready to brief.
- Specifying technology instead of outcome — let the agency pick the stack unless you have a specific constraint.
- Skipping the budget envelope — agencies cannot tell you what is buildable inside an unknown budget; you end up with a quote that is either over or under by a factor of two.
- Including everything you might ever build — a brief is a scoping document, not a vision deck. Save the vision for the call.
Ready to send your brief?
Drop it into our quote page and we will reply with a fixed quote or a clear "this is not the right fit" inside two business days. If you want to understand who we are first, our about page covers the team and our process.