Release & Communication · master area
Client Notes
Decisions or changes that came up in a conversation — captured, linked to the Epic and brief they affect, dated. The relationship's memory between the weekly update and the next bi-weekly sync.
Owners: PO Phase it lives in: Continuous The corpus principle this enacts: The artefacts the chain produces survive the conversation.
Where it lives in the chain
- After We Build · Client cadence — where notes feed into the cadence
How to do this
After every client conversation that touches scope, schedule, or signal:
- Note, within 2 hours. Slack thread, Confluence page, repo doc — whatever the team uses, one place, consistently.
- Link to the affected Epic, brief, or signal reading.
- Date and source — "2026-05-18 · bi-weekly sync · Maya (client) and Alex (PO) present."
- Tag the kind — decision, change request, concern raised, deadline shifted.
- Surface to the trio at the next standup if action is required.
What good practice looks like
A client mentions in conversation: "By the way, we'd love to see the grading report by school by next quarter." That is a Client Note, not yet a feature request, not yet a brief — but the conversation happened, the team needs the record, and the next bi-weekly sync should not be surprised by the request becoming a deliverable.
The Note is written:
2026-05-18 — Maya mentioned (bi-weekly sync) interest in per-school grading reports by Q3. Not yet scoped. Surfacing at next portfolio review to assess against capacity.
Three months later, when the request becomes a brief, the team has the original moment — what the client said, in their words, when they said it. That is what makes the brief witnessable; what makes the relationship navigable; what keeps the client's understanding of "what we asked for" aligned with the team's understanding of "what they asked for."
A team that doesn't keep client notes rediscovers requests every quarter, surprises clients with forgotten asks, and accumulates a relationship debt nobody can name but everyone feels.
Related crafts
- Weekly Client Update — the outbound half
- Bi-Weekly Sync — where notes are read alongside scope decisions