A website project goes sideways when the brief is a list of pages and a deadline. The team can still design screens, but nobody has agreed what the site is supposed to change.
Start with the visitor. Who arrives, what they already know, and what they need to believe before they enquire. Then name the business job: explain a service, qualify a lead, support a launch, or replace a site that the team can no longer edit.
Collect the constraints in the same conversation. Brand rules, content you already have, systems the form must reach, languages, and the date that is real rather than hopeful. A short sitemap is useful after those points, not before them.
Sovassa treats that brief as the start of Discover. The pages, the design system, and the build plan should all be able to point back to it.
