30-Minutes Broken Brief

You didn't write the brief. You were handed it. And in the first twenty minutes, you knew something was wrong.

The deliverables were vague. The outcomes were undefined. The solution space was either impossibly broad or based on assumptions nobody had tested. Someone had made promises to the client that your team was now expected to keep — built on language so open that anything could qualify as done and nothing could be proven out of scope.

You raised it. You were told not to worry. And now you're running a project on a foundation that was never there.

This book is for that situation.

Not how to write a better brief — that conversation happened before you arrived. This is about how to read the brief you've been handed, diagnose exactly what's broken, and act on that diagnosis before the project collapses — even when the people above you don't want to hear it.

The 30-Minute Broken Brief gives you:

• The three-part brief diagnostic — how to assess any brief in twenty minutes and categorise it as solid, repairable, or broken
• The repair conversation framework — how to fix a weak brief before the work starts, when the conditions allow it
• The broken brief response protocol — what to do when the brief is broken and the authority to fix it doesn't see the problem
• The alarm conversation — how to raise a structural concern in a way that is heard, documented, and professional
• The scope position document — how to create a defensible scope record even when the original brief gives you nothing to work with
• The stopping decision — when to escalate above your immediate authority, and when to recommend that the project stops

The brief told you everything you needed to know. This book tells you what to do with that information.