The brief was not a list of features. It described something that had stopped working: spending that someone used to be able to keep in their head no longer fit there.
Briefs like this are the most useful kind. They name the symptom and leave the diagnosis open, which lets the diagnosis arrive somewhere neither side expected.
So the work covered building the system, integrating it, and a screen that makes oversight easy. The last part was what that one sentence was really asking for.
A system like this proves its worth in the final stretch. Collecting the figures is the work; the point of the project is the moment someone can look at one screen and judge where the budget stands.
It is our clearest example of a principle we hold to: define the problem before choosing the technology.
Sources
2023 project brief. The quoted sentence is from the brief as recorded by W Labs; the client is not named.