Templates without rigidity: standardising the boring parts

Studios resist templates for a reasonable reason: most templates they have seen were written by someone who did not do the work. They add fields nobody fills in and steps nobody needs, and they make every project feel the same in the ways that do not matter.

Standardise the logistics, not the craft

A template should own everything that is identical across projects: how kickoff works, how rounds are named, where files live, who approves, when review closes. The work itself — the design, the writing, the thinking — should stay free of any template's influence.

Three templates beat one

Studios almost never run one kind of engagement. A sprint, a retainer, and a discovery phase need different milestones and different review shapes. Three small templates, each honest about its shape, beat one generic template that fits none of them well.

• Match templates to how you sell, not how you wish you sold
• Name milestones the way clients already understand them
• Leave the creative process out of the structure entirely
• Review each template quarterly and delete what nobody uses

The measure of a good template is invisible: a new team member runs a project from it without asking what any of the fields mean, and an experienced one barely notices it is there.