Project Sizing

Projects can fundamentally be of arbitraty size depending on their end purpose or whether they might be considered as just a prototype or MVP or a finished project — it’s all about the requirements of a project at a specific point in time.

On this note, traditional wisdom dictates that we understand the kind of manpower that is needed for such a project. I would argue to the converse: according to my experience, what is needed for a project (it’s requirements) should fit the manpower and concrete man-hours that are available for it. Projects sizing at a particular point in time, must depend on this combination of resources of the maker(s) of said project.

Sole makers must understand how to size thier prototype/MVP projects according to their individual ability to commit time and effort towards the project. As a project becomes bigger or higher stakes, (e.g. a MVP project gaining users and monetization potential), one must commence the delicate balancing act of manpower and project requirements — increasing the former to fulfill the latter as the latter is increased to achieve further project goals (of profitability or user growth, for instance).

Sole makers are often also encountered with more uphill work while creating projects and have to hold themeslves accountable for keeping focused as well as separating plain imaginary work from the uphill work involved in gaining certainty for the feasibilty of a project and getting through all teh so-called “set-up bugs”.

In my experience building things on my own (and mostly failing), I often try to assign myself tasks that would normally be distrbuted on a team of programmers. I found myself at a point when I decided I was much to weak a programmer or was lacking resources to drive a project to completion on my own, and decided to save my energy for whenever I was able to find a team. At the core of this, i was setting unecessarily high expectations for my own projects and assigning a number of pretty individually difficult tasks as a result. I would convince myself that i could handle them on my own but would just end up burnt out with a half completed project and a dearth of confindence in my ability to execute. The thought above