I came across this piece by Dan Mall on Method & Craft some weeks ago and immediately I connected with it. It's something that most digital agencies, designers and developers can relate with. At least, now, we have a term  for the work we do on projects that the client cannot sign-off but helps our process, now and in future projects: Invisible Deliverables 

I’d wager that most of us—especially the ones that work in client services—spend a majority of our time on deliverables. And rightly so; without deliverables, it would be difficult to get approvals and move forward on a project. We work for days or weeks in Photoshop to produce JPGs to send to a client. Or we craft finely tuned HTML, CSS, JavaScript to prototype a particular interaction so the client can see it in action

Yet, I rarely see time spent on things that are never intended to be shown to a client. The purpose of these is to help facilitate internal process; nothing more....read the full post »