# Portfolio case checklist Twelve checks a case study should pass before it goes in front of a hiring manager, in the order they read it. A first pass takes about ninety seconds per case. Most cases lose the reader in the first fifteen, and they lose them the same way every time: four paragraphs of context before anything happens. --- ## The opening — the first fifteen seconds - [ ] **1. The problem is stated in the first two sentences.** Not the company history. What was wrong, in numbers if you have them. - [ ] **2. The decision appears before the process.** "Checkout abandonment sat at 71 per cent on mobile. We suspected the address form. It was the shipping estimate." Now the reader wants the rest. - [ ] **3. Your role is unambiguous.** What you did, what the team did, and where the line is. Vagueness here is read as inflation. ## The middle — the next sixty seconds - [ ] **4. One discarded direction is shown.** A case that goes straight from problem to polished solution reads as a story about a genius. One with a dropped direction reads as a story about a designer. - [ ] **5. The evidence is visible.** A screenshot of the research artefact, the analytics view, the test — not a claim that research happened. - [ ] **6. Constraints are named.** Timeline, platform, legacy system, the stakeholder who said no. Work without constraints reads as work without stakes. - [ ] **7. Images are captioned with what to look at.** An uncaptioned screenshot is decoration. - [ ] **8. The craft is shown at real size.** One detail at full resolution beats six shrunk screens. ## The result — the last fifteen seconds - [ ] **9. Numbers come with their context.** What moved, over what period, and what else shipped at the same time. "Conversion rose four points, though a pricing change landed the same quarter" is more trustworthy than claiming all of it. - [ ] **10. If there are no numbers, you say what you would have measured.** That answer is fine. Inventing numbers is not. - [ ] **11. Length is three to five screens.** Anything longer will not be read on the first pass, and the first pass is the one that decides. - [ ] **12. The last paragraph says what you would do next.** Every real project ships unfinished. Naming the thing you would fix first is the clearest signal that you understand your own work, and it takes ten minutes to write. --- ## Before you publish Read the case aloud. Anywhere you add a spoken explanation that is not on the page, the page is missing something. Put it in and cut something else.