I prefer to rough focus ellipsoidals in the spot position. That way you can in during the focus part of the hang center the beam on the desired acting area once it's in position and get an idea of how far it's off it's target.
Otherwise in hang and kind of
pre-focus, it's probably acceptable to especially in a rush do it the other way around. Get the light up, get it rough focused and perhaps for rehearsal that night, flood it out. This might be a good way of doing it when time is short and you don't have time to come back and further focus the lights before they will be used.
In any case when focusing, normally the designer wants a good tight focus to focus with, than they will either leave it there or have you flood out the
barrel. Given you will need to be on a ladder behind the pre-hung
fixture during a focus
call, flood or spot won't matter as an absolute during the install but it normally will save a step in pre spotting the
fixture during it's hang.
If a quetion of
zoom type Lekos where you can change the
beam angle of the
fixture, getting the desired or expected
beam angle during hang is necessary. Much easier to change the
beam angle to what's desired on the
ground. If someone wants it the reverse of this say flooded first than brought in during hang, they have not done their
photometrics homework and are making those do the focus for them do extra work because of this. Easy to pre-figure
beam angle on the
plot before
hand and only as needed change it as opposed to hang it first than change the
beam angle in the air.