From The Second Product
The January Page
One evening, early in the year, one side of paper. Every living product gets one line and one word. Keep the page; next January, read it before you write the new one.
For each product
- Name
- As you'd say it to a friend.
- Its slot
- When it gets your attention, and how long it has actually taken over the last 3 months. Not how long you meant it to take.
- Its year, in one line
- The best thing and the worst thing that happened to it.
- Who's asking for what
- Any request from more than one paying customer, still unbuilt.
- Interest or duty
- Do you open it because you want to, or because you have to?
- One word
- Keep, grow, hand over or close.
For the whole page
- Slots used against slots you have
- If "grow" appears twice and there's one free slot, one of them waits a year.
- The idea list
- Anything written down during the year that is still good. Nothing on it starts until a slot is free and the newest product has settled.
- The parts folder
- What was added this year, and what is missing that you wrote twice.
- The hard words
- Every "hand over" and "close", with the month by which it will be done. Spring at the latest.
3 questions to finish
Which of these would I start again tomorrow, knowing what I know?
Which one am I keeping because closing it would mean admitting something?
If I could only keep one, which, and what does that tell me about the others?
From The Second Product, Appendix A. The other forms are on the tools page.