Before you invite an agency

Once you bring an agency into the mix, your investment will only go up – both in terms of time and money. So you might want to ask yourself and your team a few questions before you take this step:

Are we prepared to prioritize this project, even when it competes with other initiatives?
Have we allocated sufficient resources (budget, personnel, time) for both development and long-term maintenance?
Is our leadership team fully on board and willing to champion the project?
Are we open to making significant changes to our processes or business model if the project requires it?
Do we have a clear vision for how this project will impact our business in the long term?

If you find yourself answering any of these questions with ’no’, it doesn’t mean that you have to scrap your plans just yet. But you should probably spend some more time on planning.

Agencies tend to be naturally opportunistic and take on jobs even if they detect red flags already while writing their proposal. However, a good agency will be happy to tell you if they don’t believe that your project will succeed and why. All it takes is for you to ask for a second opinion.

A great agency will ask you follow-up questions and challenge your premises. This approach might help you understand some of the challenges they might anticipate and ideally helps avoid time and energy spent on a product or service that maybe shouldn’t be built in the first place.

Our take

Clients sometimes ask us and other agencies to “challenge” their ideas right from the start, even during the proposal phase. We get it, and we appreciate the sentiment. But honestly, we’ve learned that not everyone’s ready to be challenged.

Real challenge isn’t just about poking holes. It’s about working together to make something better. That means being open to change and actually iterating—building on the ideas and feedback. If everything’s already set in stone, and any challenge just feels like a roadblock, it’s not productive. It just creates frustration.

We’ve seen it happen: a client has a plan, and any suggestion for change feels like it’s going to derail the whole project. If that’s the case, it’s worth taking a hard look at your process. If your way of working is so rigid that you can’t even consider new ideas, you’ll probably struggle to handle regular customer feedback, too. And trust me, no product team wants to be in that position.

Perttu Monthan Head of ecom & loyalty & CCO, DK&A

Example

Some companies’ CEOs are also founders, and as such, deeply invested in both the success of the company and the day-to-day operations. Many have started out as engineers or designers themselves – hands-on, fully immersed in the nitty-gritty of what makes their products tick. As companies grow, some of these people end up focusing more on the operational and strategic aspects of running a business, while others remain in the trenches. The latter might be due to large quantities of specific and valuable domain knowledge living rent free in their heads, or because they are, well, the micromanaging type.

Whatever the reason, over time we have encountered a fair share of projects instigated by CEOs and higher-ups which ended up on the desk of our customer contacts only post-conception. And while some ideas are well founded, others (let’s call them the shower-thought variety) maybe … less so.

A healthy company culture will make it possible to challenge anyone’s ideas, even the CEO’s. If you feel that you are stuck with someone else’s idea which you struggle to “get” then it’s time put your culture to the test: Have the idea explained to you in peace, ask some tough questions, and voice your concerns. A healthy company and a good CEO will not only accept your feedback but actively seek it out.