Assigned a project on Friday at 5pm that is due on Monday.

Assigned a project on Friday at 5pm that is due on Monday.

I report to the VP of Product at my company. Friday he asked me to have a requirements document done by Monday (at the CEOs request) that we previously agreed on a two week timeline for. This is for a completely new project that we're going to outsource to an agency that has had no prior research done for it. I don't understand how I am supposed to come up with requirements for something that does not exist over the weekend. I also don't understand why we need to do a requirements doc when we are going to hire an agency. I feel like this would be apart of their process. I did it anyway and shared the document with him today. I only covered the high level pages but now he is asking that I map out every button, image and feature on each page. My reaction is "what features??" I literally do not know what I'm doing or why there is all of sudden such urgency and I'm unsure how to address this situation. For any product leaders is this common practice? What would you do in this situation?

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  1. Anonymous

    I would gather all my questions in one list to be vetted by the team or you and submit a generic project plan as an attachment to a meeting invite for Monday morning. Run the meeting like you would any exploratory meeting and once you get more direction, update the plan and timeline accordingly and get ready to hand off to your third party later in the week when everyone and your boss is ready to assign the work.

  2. Anonymous

    I agree with the other commenter. With this last minute of a request, the fine details of the plan and timeline can be adjusted as the project progresses.

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