Whose turn is it? Project stages that keep clients informed

When a client sends yet another message asking for an update, impatience is rarely the cause. They simply have no view of where their work is, so they ask, and someone on the agency side stops what they are doing to reply. The agency almost certainly tracks the work somewhere, on a board, in a colour-coded spreadsheet or in a status field with eleven options that everyone reads differently. What is missing is a set of stages written for the client.

Clients are not asking to see a board. They want to know two things: is anything happening, and is anyone waiting on me? A short list of stages, each with a plain meaning, answers both. If you hire agencies, it is a reasonable thing to ask about before you sign. If you run your own team or manage suppliers, the same structure works just as well from the other side.

Why fewer stages work better

Teams often want the stages to mirror every step of production: concept, first draft, internal review, second draft, client review one, amends, client review two. All of those steps happen, but none needs its own label on the client's screen. Each extra stage makes the boundaries fuzzier, and fuzzy boundaries are why people stop trusting a status.

Five stages handle nearly all agency work, and two more cover work that stops. What each is called matters far less than the three things defined for it: what it tells the client, who moves it on, and what has to be true before it moves.

Requested

• What it tells the client: the request has reached the agency and is on record. It does not mean anyone has started.
• Who moves it on: the agency, by saying yes or no.
• What must be true first: the request fits the agreed scope or has a price attached, and there is enough detail to write a brief from.

Requests are where silence does the most harm. One that sits for a week with no answer at all is usually the one that ends in an uncomfortable email.

Briefed

• What it tells the client: the work is accepted, and they now know what they will get and when.
• Who moves it on: the account manager, once the client has confirmed the brief and people are assigned.
• What must be true first: a signed-off brief. Until then, nothing goes into production.

The common trap here is starting too soon. While the client is still sending references and changes, the job has not really been briefed, whatever the team's enthusiasm.

Active

• What it tells the client: the agency has the ball and nothing is needed from them, so a quiet week means progress rather than neglect.
• Who moves it on: the team lead.
• What must be true first: there is something to show, and it has been through the agency's own internal review.

Skipping that internal check is a false economy. Work that goes out unchecked tends to come back with notes the agency ought to have spotted itself.

In review

• What it tells the client: it is now their turn. Of all the stages, this is the one they most need to see.
• Who moves it on: the client, by approving or asking for changes.
• What must be true first: the client knows exactly what they are reviewing, what sort of feedback is useful, and the date it is needed by.

Requests for changes return the work to Active, and that is entirely normal. The discipline lies in counting each round against what the brief included, so round three is a conversation both sides saw coming rather than a surprise.

A good status tells the client whose turn it is. When it is theirs, they should only need telling once.

Delivered

• What it tells the client: the job is finished and they hold everything they need, in the formats they asked for, with no separate chase for source files.
• Who moves it on: the account manager.
• What must be true first: the client has approved, and the final files have been sent.

Delivery is also the natural moment to raise the invoice, where a project is billed on completion, and to jot down anything that will help with the next job.

Paused and Declined

Not every job runs to the end, and two further stages cover that honestly. Paused is for work halted by something outside the agency's hands: the client is waiting on legal, the launch has shifted, the product is not ready. It tells the client their work is parked and safe, not lost, and it keeps a stalled job from being counted as late.

Declined is for requests the agency has turned down, whether they sit outside scope or cannot be done in the time. Keep them on the list rather than deleting them. Both sides can then see what was asked and how it was answered, and anything declined can be reopened if the situation changes.

One vocabulary for everyone

None of this works if the team speaks one language internally and another to the client. A private board with its own labels, converted into client-friendly wording in a weekly email, is really two systems, and within a month they no longer match.

• Write a one-line definition for each stage and hand it to the client at the start of the relationship.
• Name the person who moves each stage on, so nothing waits on someone who does not know it is theirs to move.
• Move work only on evidence, such as a signed-off brief or an approval, never on a feeling that it is almost done.
• Keep the client's view current. The moment it goes stale, the update requests start again.

Put the status where the client already is

Stages the client cannot see do nothing to stop the chasing. The simplest fix is to show the status in the same place the client sends requests and approves drafts, ideally with a review link that opens without a login. The tool matters less than the outcome: a status the client can read without having to ask. If you are choosing an agency, ask them to show you how you will see where your work stands.

Getting stages like these to run smoothly is partly habit and partly workflow design. If you would like to talk through how it could work for your team or your suppliers, ALXO is happy to help.