Tomorrow we’ll head into "picking the right project," but today I’m so excited about Joel Spolsky’s recent post "The Big Picture" that I must comment on it.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/01/21.html

Here’s my favorite part:

One of the unfortunate side effects is that your mind gets into a bad habit of overestimating how clearly it understands things. It always thinks it has The Big Picture even when it doesn’t.

This is a particularly dangerous trap when it comes to software development. You get some big picture idea in your head for what you want to do, and it all seems so crystal clear that it doesn’t even seem like you need to design anything. You can just dive in and start implementing your vision.

This is exactly the line of thought that causes people to say "we don’t need no stinking project management." However, I find that when I ask a simple question, such as "what are the specific deliverables," those same folks just don’t have an answer.

Project management isn’t rocket science, but it sure is useful.