

Ask YC: How Much Time Do you Spend planning? - iamdave

I'm in the early stages of of planning a startup; "Campus Computer".  It's a two part deal; online tech support with offline/office based hardware/software support for the students at a local university (primarily because of my existing connections there and the proximity of which I live to the campus).  In this day and age of web based business operations and project management, how much time do you spend planning a startup versus prototyping concepts for your startup?<p>I make the dichotomy understanding this:<p>Planning - deciding on factors, how you want to interact with your products and services, and how you want them to appear to your users<p>Prototyping - developing certain aspects during the planning phase to understand how they'll work and whether or not they should be included in the final product.<p>It's a good argument to say prototyping is part of planning, and they both have their importance, but I guess one is more concrete the other abstract.
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st3fan
Killed by Planning is something you should definitely avoid. Don't turn your
startup into an organization where everything needs to be outlined in pages
long documents.

What you describe as planning is something I would call the (functional)
design phase of your products and services.

My main reasons (as an architectect) to ask (business/product) people for a
planning like that is that a) they will think more thorough about what they
actually want to do (which is never what they told you yesterday), b) they
write down things so that the development team has a plan to turn into a
concrete project and c) do some form of short to medium term commitment to
these plans. The latter also means responsibility.

S.

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bayareaguy
A written plan will help you communicate goals and tasks but until you get to
the point where you have to manage other people, I'd say don't make planning a
seperate thing.

Instead keep a document with the details you think need more planning and
maintain it as you go about the actual work. Refer back to this document
whenever you need to as you interact with people and revise accordingly.

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edw519
1\. Grab a pencil and paper and lay things out until it's time to stop laying
things out and see what they'll look like.

2\. Code until you realize you need to slow down and think about things a
little more.

3\. Go to Step 1.

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iamdave
I like this approach. Very open ended but crucial if you're discerning enough.

