How to Brief an AI or Software Agency So You Get What You Wanted

Most projects that go wrong with an agency went wrong in the first conversation. The owner described a solution instead of a problem, left out the awkward constraint, and assumed the agency understood the business. Months later both sides are frustrated and the invoice is bigger than expected. A decent brief prevents most of this.

Start with the problem, not the solution

"We need an app" and "we need a chatbot" are solutions. The brief should describe what is going wrong or what you want to become possible.

Compare these two openings:

• "We want an AI chatbot on our website."
• "Our two-person office answers the same twenty questions by phone and email, and we lose about a third of each day to it. Customers also ask outside business hours and get nothing."

The second lets an agency suggest a chatbot, an FAQ page, a better booking form or something else entirely. It also lets them tell you if a chatbot is the wrong answer, which is the sort of honesty you want to find out early.

What a brief should contain

Cover these seven items. Bullet points are fine.

1. The problem and who has it. Who is affected, how often, and what it costs you in time, money or customers.
2. The users. Who will touch the finished thing: staff, customers, suppliers? How comfortable are they with technology?
3. What exists today. Current systems, tools and spreadsheets, including the ugly ones. Name Xero, MYOB, HubSpot or whatever you run, since integration is often where the cost hides.
4. The data. Where information lives, how clean it is, and whether any of it is sensitive. Mention personal information, health records or financial data early, since it shapes the design and your obligations under the Privacy Act. Seek legal advice on specifics.
5. Constraints. Budget range, deadline and the reason for it, things that cannot change, people who must approve.
6. What success looks like. Two or three observable outcomes. "Quotes go out the same day" is testable. "Better customer experience" is not.
7. What is out of scope. The list of things you are not asking for. This prevents both quiet assumptions and quiet price increases.

Be honest about money and decisions

Agencies work better when they know the budget range. Hiding it does not get you lower prices. It gets you proposals that miss the mark, either too grand or too thin. A range such as "somewhere between X and Y, and here is why" is enough.

Equally important, say who decides. If three partners must agree, tell the agency up front and put them in the discovery conversation. Projects stall when a fourth stakeholder appears at the demo.

Describe the messy reality

Agencies often only see the tidy version of your process. Tell them about the exceptions: the customer who pays by cheque, the job that needs two approvals, the supplier who sends invoices as photos. Exceptions are where software gets expensive, and surfacing them early produces an accurate quote.

Offer real samples where you can, with sensitive details removed: a typical enquiry, an invoice, a spreadsheet. Ten minutes of examples beats an hour of description.

Agree how you will work together

A brief should also cover the working relationship.

• Who is your point of contact, and how quickly can they answer questions?
• How will you see progress? Look for something you can click or use early, not only status reports.
• How are changes handled? Requirements move. Ask how a change is priced and approved.
• Who owns what is built? Code, workflows, prompts, accounts and data. Get it in writing before work starts.
• What happens after launch? Fixes, hosting, monitoring and who answers the phone when it breaks.

Our companion piece, ten questions to ask before signing with any AI agency, turns many of these points into questions you can put to them.

Judge the response, not just the price

When proposals arrive, read what comes back as a test of the agency. Did they restate your problem accurately? Did they ask sharp questions or just accept everything? Did they say anything is a bad idea? A proposal that agrees with every word you wrote is a warning sign. Good agencies push back on things that will not work.

Also compare like with like. Two quotes can differ because one includes testing, documentation and handover and the other does not.

Where to start

If you want to test a brief on someone, 21Labs, a Sydney agency serving businesses across Australia, reviews yours during free discovery and tells you plainly what it would take, including when a simpler route fits better. Our custom development service covers the builds that need it, and we reply to every enquiry within 24 hours.