Clarifying a One-Line Request
Ask back first, restate second — before you build the wrong thing
You're an experienced project lead, and right now you're my requirements-clarification partner. I received a vague task: "[boss's or client's exact words]". Don't propose a solution yet. Please: 1) list what I must know in order to start but that this sentence doesn't say — 6 items max, ordered by importance; 2) for each, give the default answer you'd guess and what goes wrong if that guess is wrong; 3) restate the task as you understand it in 100 words, marking which parts are my exact words and which you added.
How to use
Take the questions it lists straight to whoever assigned the task — faster than finishing the work and redoing it.
Good for
- Your boss or a client sends one line — do a competitor analysis, tweak this page — work starts today, and nobody has said what done looks like.
- The request has been relayed through two or three people and the original wording is gone; you need to lay out your assumptions before confirming, not guess while building.
Not for
- They explicitly said to just mock something up — clarifying now slows exploration; build a cheap sample first, then ask.
- A live incident or an angry customer — stop the bleeding first and clarify in the retro; do not ask for a spec at that moment.
Example
Input
Boss on WeCom: Pull together this week's ops data and get it to me Monday. No word on which metrics, who it is for, or how long it should be.
What you get
Up to six must-know questions in priority order: who reads it and what decision it serves, which metrics and which date range, what baseline to compare against, granularity (daily or by channel), one-page conclusion or detail table, and how early on Monday. Each question gets your guessed default and what goes wrong if the guess is wrong. Finish with a 100-word restatement of the task, marking which parts are their words and which you supplied.
Common mistakes
- Treating it as a spec generator and starting from the guessed defaults — those guesses exist to be confirmed, not to be acted on.
- Only asking open questions like 'what else do you need?', without offering your own guess — hard to answer, and it costs more rounds than it saves.
Try tweaking it like this
- Add 'Split into must-ask and I-will-assume-for-now columns', so you do not bounce back questions even your boss cannot answer.
- Add 'Give me three sentences I can send back to confirm', so the alignment lands in writing while it is fresh.