My shared decision doc ran off with the project timeline

I had this client in Austin who kept giving me vague notes and then getting mad when the build came out different. After the third revision cycle, I tried writing a single shared doc that listed every decision we made, even the tiny ones like which outlet height we picked. No more guessing, no more 'but I thought we said...' emails. It took about an hour to set up, but it killed the back and forth completely. Now I'm wondering if I should do this for every project or if it's just overkill for smaller jobs. Anyone else use a shared decision log, or do you just trust the chat history to sort it out?

2 comments

2 Comments

jake_wilson121mo ago

Actually, the outlet height thing is a good example but not for the reason you'd think. Those tiny details are exactly where projects fall apart, so logging them isn't overkill, it's the bare minimum for anything with more than one room or trade involved. For a quick paint job or a single fixture swap, sure, skip it, but once you're past that, the hour you spend setting it up saves you from way more than an hour of arguing later.

hayden1441mo ago

The whole history thing is a trap too. Chat logs get buried under meme replies and random texts about lunch, nobody wants to scroll through all that when theyre trying to figure out if we said the switch plate goes on the left or the right. A decision doc makes everything searchable and holds people accountable, its way easier to point to a line that says "client approved this exact thing" than to argue about what a text thread "implies." Plus once you start one for a small job it scales up real nice, you just copy the template and add whatever new categories pop up. The hour setup pays for itself the first time somebody tries to flip a decision later on.