How do you keep your thoughts together when building a product?

Question

I've tried building products in the past and what ends up happening is that the ideas and features keep getting compounded and I end up in a place where I no longer know what I'm building.When building a product thoughts and ideas are coming in from all over the place. How do you keep your product feature set from getting unwieldy, and how do you stay focused on building what you initially defined.

mattszaszko · Accepted Answer

Ruthlessly say no to most things. This is easier said than done pre-PMF of course.Try to validate without building, before committing to invest into actually building something as indeed, it has a lot of cost on top of just development. It increases complexity both technically and conceptually.

catchnear4321 · Answer

create milestones. bound the scope.if you don&rsquo;t set and defend a finish line, you will never reach it.you can always make additional finish lines.

How do you keep your thoughts together when building a product?

Ruthlessly say no to most things. This is easier said than done pre-PMF of course.
Try to validate without building, before committing to invest into actually building something as indeed, it has a lot of cost on top of just development. It increases complexity both technically and conceptually.

create milestones. bound the scope.
if you don’t set and defend a finish line, you will never reach it.
you can always make additional finish lines.