Signs it is time to revisit choosing an agency

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. A few signals that choosing an agency is due some attention.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Ask who will actually do the work
• Look at sites they built two years ago, not just last month

Where to start

References matter more than the pitch deck. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

In practice

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about choosing an agency before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Ask who will actually do the work — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.