FOR AGENCIES
The project that’s still talked about – for all the wrong reasons.
You know the one. The one that gets used as the ‘worst case scenario’ example, and produces knowing looks between teammates. The brief seemed reasonable and the team was strong, but somewhere between kickoff and launch the details stopped showing up — and the project went from green, to yellow, to red.
You know the one. Maybe you’ve even got a name for it.
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The brief seemed reasonable, perhaps a little lofty or light on detail. You had a strong team, but once the project started, the important details never materialized.
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The client suddenly had other priorities and responses slowed to a crawl, or they became laser focused on one particular aspect of the work.
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New stakeholders with new requirements kept materializing, but no one would agree on or approve anything. The project was yellow, and the list of blockers kept growing.
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Change tickets kept reworking the same features while vague, untouched epics sat in the backlog. You reassigned your developers to other projects because you had to.
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Your PM did their best to nurture the relationship, but every client meeting uncovered something new or rehashed something old. Milestones kept shifting. The project was red.
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Your team was burned out, but launch day was finally approaching. The client promised only a couple more changes—they were presenting the website to their board for the first time next week.
What if you could have a do-over? And a better outcome.
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You’d dive deep into exactly what the site needs to do and why before allocating resources and kicking off design, asking the right questions and setting expectations upfront.
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You’d get a clear picture of the client’s audiences and stakeholders by speaking to them directly, then map each feature and dependency and validate them with the client.
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You’d make sure the client team understands exactly what they’re responsible for and when—feedback, content, approvals and system access. And you’d price it accordingly.
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Now you and the client are working in a true partnership. Your team knows what they’re building, why and in what order, with clear approval processes to resolve blockers quickly.
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Your PM is confident in the timelines and milestones, and the budget is healthy. Testing surfaces typos and tweaks, not rework and refactoring.
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The launch is smooth and the site is well-received because users’ needs have been addressed. The client raves about your team at a conference. The case study writes itself. Very cool.
What I do, and why I'm the one to do it
I'm the website strategy and planning partner for agencies who want a robust set of requirements that brings clarity to complex builds, supports strong client collaboration and maximizes utilization rates on a project-byproject basis.
I've spent nearly two decades managing website projects and operations, and I’ve been on both sides of the fence. I’ve led agency-side discovery and delivery for large institutional site builds, and I’ve been a client of many agencies during my time leading digital teams inside those institutions. I know which questions to ask, how to capture the big picture and when to drill down into the details. I know what true client/agency partnership looks like and how to build shared understanding between tech and non-tech subject matter experts.
I work with your frameworks, your systems, your values.
When I partner with agencies like yours, I work autonomously yet collaboratively and shape discovery outputs that meet your clients needs and fit your processes.
How we can work together
My expertise is most valuable to agencies who serve organizations in higher education, not-for-profit, public sector, arts, culture, and tourism sectors. Institutions that usually have websites with complex features and functionality, challenging stakeholder dynamics or unique operational realities.
Here are some of the options for how we can work together:
Project Partnership — embedded discovery lead
You've won a complex build and know how vital discovery will be to the success of the project. I come in as part of your team to facilitate the full discovery process for you. You get a bespoke discovery plan that meets your client where they’re at, often including stakeholder interviews, current-state analysis, goal-setting, business and functional requirements gathering and feature validation. Before the final client sign-off, I run a Q&A with your team so nothing is a surprise.
From your client’s perspective, it’s all one project as I contract and bill with your agency directly.
Are you still in the proposal or RFP stage and want to collaborate to incorporate comprehensive discovery into your pitch? Get in touch!
Referral — dedicated discovery before you begin
A prospective client comes to you and you can tell they’re underprepared. They say they want a new site, and have a whole list of complaints about the current one, but that’s about it. They can’t articulate who uses their website or what they need, they point to vanity metrics and organization-wide strategic plans as website goals, or perhaps it’s their first time and they just don’t know where to start. Connect them with me first to do the groundwork. I’ll guide them through a discovery and definition process to produce a project scope that you can confidently estimate against.
For this work, I contract and bill the client directly. Where a referral arrangement is agreed in advance, I pay you a referral fee. When you refer to me, I operate under the assumption that the client will contract you for the design and build, but I don’t guarantee it.
Enablement — design the discovery process for your team
You want to run discovery in-house, but don’t have a clear process or useful tools so your teams have to keep reinventing the wheel for every project. They have other, more important and more billable responsibilities and deliverables, so building something reusable falls to the bottom of their backlog. I work with your team to co-design a repeatable framework tailored to the way you work, audit your existing tools, templates and documentation, and train your team to use and own them.
Note: All engagements are non-exclusive. You can work with other strategists. I can work with other agencies. Terms are negotiated project-by-project.
What this actually does for your agency:
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Senior strategic expertise without the overhead
You pay for the work you need, on the projects that need it.
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Reduced rework, better resource utilization and higher margins
Through validated requirements at the beginning means fewer assumptions baked into your timeline and budget estimates and fewer scope conversations mid-project.
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A client who understands
The process and their responsibilities, and has signed off on requirements.
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Faster time to delivery
Your team isn't trying to extract requirements from the client as they go, so they can focus on what they do best.
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Deliverables that fit your framework
We’ll talk about how your team processes information and determine the best way to package the discovery findings and requirements, whether it’s through written reports, dev tickets, UAT plans, user stories, or something else entirely.
Budgets
The investment depends on your project’s complexity, the depth of research needed, and the number of stakeholders involved.
15-25%
The typical share of your overall project budget for discovery and requirements gathering.
$50,000+ CAD
My services add the most value to website projects with overall budgets in this range.
Questions
Here are some questions to help you better understand how I can help you and your organizations.
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Some agencies introduce me as a member of their team, while others present me as an external partner. I’m open to both and we would discuss and align on this before any client contact takes place.
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Generally, no. I do a comprehensive handover with your team and then let them get on with what they do best. If there is some kind of ongoing support you feel would be valuable to have throughout the project, we can discuss.
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Not when sales is the core or sole function of the website. A museum that has an online store as part of a larger institutional site - yes. A retailer or manufacturer whose main business is selling products - no.
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No. My work is a better fit for agencies who work with clients directly and consider me interacting with their clients as a part of the process.
How to get started
Get in touch, we’ll commiserate about THAT project and then we’ll talk about how I can help make sure it never happens again.