Informal
An
informal brief is often a undocumented verbal contract between two or
more people. an advantage of an informal brief is that it can contain
more information than a formal brief, as it is vocally explained to the
contractee, although a informal brief can often be misinterpreted by the
contractee and deadlines can be unclear.
Formal
A
formal brief is often a written contract in which is given to the
contractee, the instructions are often unclear to some people as it only
gives the bare minimum specifications on how to make the required
product. An advantage to a formal brief is that it leaves the project
open to negotiation between the both parties. A disadvantage is that the
person who created the brief can think they included enough information
within the brief required to make the product, but when passed to the
contractee can be often confusing and hard for the contractee to produce
the end project.
Contractual
A
contractual brief is a brief in which is given to a specific individual
or company. The brief contains specific guidelines and a specific
deadline in which the contractee must follow. The main advantage of
having a contractual brief is that the contractee will have very
specific guidelines in order to achieve the final result. A disadvantage
of a contractual brief is that if the brief is unclear in certain areas
the contractee could end up producing a product unsatisfactory to the
contractor.
Collaborative
A
collaborative brief is one in which is given to two or more
contractees, after receiving the brief the companies will then work
together to produce the required product. If a conflict of ideas should
arise a negotiated brief can be put in place in order to resolve the
issues.
Tendered
A
tendered brief is one in which the brief will not be finalised until
the company has came up with a final product in order to create, many
products will be created and pitched to the company and they will then
tender the brief to that specific product. An advantage of a tendered
brief is that a better quality product can be created as the company can
choose the best idea from the variety of the suggestions. A
disadvantage to this type of brief is that it could be hard to find the
correct contractee for the pitched project, meaning the company
proposing the idea could be set back in development time on their
product.
Commissioned
A
commissioned brief is a brief in which the company will contract (or
commission) an external company to produce the required product in their
place. The commissioned company will be shared within the royalties for
the product. The brief is not negotiated between the company and the
client, however it is negotiated between the two contractees. An
advantage is that the main contractee will have to next to no work,
after passing it onto the commissioned company. A disadvantage is that
because the brief is not negotiated with the contractor the product can
be produced to an insufficient standard.
Consultation
Consultation
is a key issue when working to a brief, for example if you have an
issue with a specific part of the brief it is best to consult the
contractor rather than assuming what they meant and continuing to do
what you think they meant, as this could cause a problem with the end
product.
Discretion
Discretion
is always good to take into consideration, for example you could ask
your contractor if things within the brief to better suit your
development cycle. You could also ask if the budget is open for
discussion as this can allow you to more easily produce the project.
Constraints
A
constraint could be if a primarily English speaking company contracted a
company that primarily spoke Chinese there would be a lot of problems
with making the project as the contracted company would have difficulty
understanding the English brief. Copyright is also an issue as the
product being created could violate the copyright of another product.
Budget
There
are many issues with budgeting, mainly dependant upon the finance
source. Some examples of finance income are Crowdfunding and
Independant. Some examples of problems with these funding types are with
crowdfunding, and you put your project on a website like kickstarter,
your project may not reach the required goal the project will get no
money. Independant however is much harder to fund in general as it is
often funded by a single person and as such they will be capped a
specific budget and will very rarely go higher than that budget.
Conditions
If
when making the project a issue arises where you need to add a new
component within the brief it can be discussed with the contractor and
then possibly added into the development cycle. Making sure regulations
haven't changed is important as you need to make sure you are using the
correct tools the contractor want you to, instead of making something in
a way they don't want you to.
Plan (time)
Planning
the brief is the main part within making a brief as it must be SMART
(Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time based). The brief
must be SMART as otherwise the product may not be specific enough for
the contractee or achievable within the given time limit. Another part
of planning is making sure that the workload is evenly distributed
between the start time and the deadline, this is the contractees job to
do this and it will reduce strain upon them meaning they can get the
entire project done before the deadline, a good idea would be to plan to
produce the project a week or two earlier than the deadline and then
polish up the project within those final two weeks. Planning the fees
for the project is also vital to the planning process, as midway through
making a project if you run out of money to produce the required
project you can end up with a incomplete or a scrapped project.
Bibliography
