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Saturday, January 15, 2005

Plan Projects Backwards From Goals

by Asim Jalis

Here is a technique I have found useful for planning small projects: Write down the goal. Then write down the steps working backwards from the goal. For example, if my goal is to resolve a bug, I start with a list that looks like this: [ ] resolve bug Then with some thinking I come up with things I need to get there, and write them down higher up in the list. So I get something like: [ ] test hypothesis A [ ] test hypothesis B [ ] send out fix for code review to rest of team [ ] resolve bug The first two steps might further split up into subtasks, which would then precede the task that they are subtasks of. In summary, plan projects by defining them backwards.