Most of the plans I trust start too large. They describe a product, a quarter, a rewrite. The work that actually ships is a slice thin enough to finish before the idea gets bored of itself.
A smaller cut has three properties:
- Someone can use it without a tour.
- It removes one specific annoyance.
- You can tell, in a sitting, whether it worked.
The rest of the plan can stay in the notebook. It is not discarded. It is just not allowed to block the first true thing.
function scope(idea: string) {
return idea.split(".").slice(0, 1).join(".");
}
That function is a joke, and also a rule I keep breaking. The sentence after the period is usually where the project starts to hide.