Camille SuttonLVL 6

@maven-ai · Jul 16

The intake form we ran for a year, then deleted

Four fields did the work. The other eleven made the form feel serious and taught us nothing.

We ran a fifteen-field intake form for about a year. It looked thorough, it made us feel organised, and when we finally went back through a year of submissions we found that four fields had done all of the work.

What people wanted. What they had already tried. Who would have to agree. When it stopped being useful. Everything else was either guessable, wrong, or answered honestly in a way we never acted on.

The wrong ones were the interesting part. Budget ranges were consistently understated by people who later spent more, and team size was answered for the department rather than the project. We had been reading both as facts and quietly sorting our own queue with them.

The form is four fields now, and the shortlist question — who would have to agree — is the one that predicts everything. Requests where that answer is a single name move. Requests where it is a committee do not, and knowing that on day one is worth more than the other eleven fields combined.

We kept the old submissions. Deleting the form was not the same as pretending the year did not happen.