The 1-Page Project Plan (Why I Write It Before Anything Else)

A 7-section, 1-page template for any project before I start building. Plus the 3 questions that determine whether the project is worth starting at all.

The cost of not having a planI have started more projects than I have finished. Of the last 30 things I started, about 12 shipped, 8 are still in some half-finished state, and 10 were abandoned. The abandoned ones are not because the projects were bad. Most of them were good ideas. The abandoned ones are because I did not have a plan, and the absence of a plan meant the project drifted, the scope grew, the time-to-value extended, and the project died of natural causes around month 3.The shipped ones are not better ideas than the abandoned ones. The shipped ones are the ones where I wrote a 1-page plan before I started. The plan is not a project management document. The plan is 7 sections on 1 page, takes 30 minutes to write, and answers 7 specific questions. If the plan does not have good answers to all 7, the project is not ready to start, and I should not start it.The plan is the cheap part. The plan is the part I can write in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning. The plan is the part that determines whether the project ships, the project is abandoned, or the project turns into a 6-month rathole. The plan is the lever, and the lever is cheap.The 7 sectionsEvery project plan I write has the same 7 sections. The sections are short. Each section is 2-4 sentences. The total is 1 page, single-spaced, in a Google Doc. Here are the 7 sections, in the order I write them.What is it, in one sentence. The one-sentence summary. If a stranger reads only the first line of the plan, they should still be able to tell anyone else what the project is. The one-sentence summary is the test for clarity. If I cannot write the one-sentence summary, I do not understand the project well enough to start it.Who is it for. The specific person who would use this. Not "everyone." Not "people who need X." The specific person, with a name if I can pick one. ("Marketing managers at small companies," not "business owners." "Forklift drivers in Ohio," not "blue-collar workers.")What is the smallest version that ships. The minimum viable version. The version I could ship in a weekend. The version that does one thing, badly, and that I can show to the person in section 2 to see if it solves their problem. The MVP is the test for scope. If I cannot name the MVP, the project is too vague to start.What is the success metric. The single number that tells me whether the project worked. ("10 paying customers in 30 days." "1,000 subscribers in 90 days." "3 people told me it was useful.") The metric is the test for outcome. If I cannot name the metric, the project has no way to succeed, which means it has no way to fail, which means it will run forever without producing anything.What is the deadline. The date by which the MVP ships. The deadline is the test for commitment. If I cannot commit to a date, the project is not real. It is a hobby, and hobbies are fine, but hobbies do not ship. A project with a deadline is a project. A project without a deadline is a wish.What is the budget. The total amount of money I am willing to lose on the project. The budget is the test for risk. If the project fails, the cost is the budget, and the budget is small enough that the failure is acceptable. A project without a budget is a project where the failure mode is unbounded, which is not a project I want to start.What is the kill criterion. The specific signal that tells me the project is not working and should be killed. ("If I have not shipped the MVP by [date], kill it." "If I have not made $X in sales by [date], kill it." "If 5 potential users tell me they would not use it, kill it.") The kill criterion is the test for honesty. If I cannot name a kill criterion, I will not kill the project when I should, and the project will run forever as a zombie.That is the 7 sections. Each section is 2-4 sentences. The total is about 1 page. The plan takes 30 minutes to write. The plan is the cheap part. The plan is the lever.The 3 questions that determine whether the project is worth startingOf the 7 sections, 3 are the ones I weigh most heavily. If the answers to these 3 are weak, the project does not start, regardless of how good the answers to the other 4 are.Question 1: is the "who is it for" specific enough?"Anyone who wants to write more" is not a specific audience. "Marketing managers at companies under 50 people who use ChatGPT occasionally" is. The first one is a wish. The second one is a person. The person has a job, a budget, a stack, a problem. The wish has none of those. The person is the test for whether the project is real. If I cannot name the person, the project is not real, and I should not start it.Question 2: is the MVP shippable in a weekend?If the MVP takes a month to ship, the project is too big for a side project. If the MVP takes a year to ship, the project is a startup, not a side project. The MVP that ships in a weekend is the test for whether the project is the right size for me to do as a side project, while I am also doing my day job, my family stuff, and the rest of my life. A project that requires a year of full-time work is not a project I can do on the side. A project that requires a weekend is.Question 3: is the kill criterion something I will actually trigger?The kill criterion is the most important section of the plan, and the one most people skip. The kill criterion is the discipline of the project. Without a kill criterion, the project is a creative writing exercise that produces code indefinitely. With a kill criterion, the project has a way to fail, which is the only way the project has a way to be honest with me about whether it is working.The kill criterion has to be specific. "I will know if it is working" is not a kill criterion. "If 5 potential users tell me they would not use it within 60 days, kill it" is a kill criterion. The first is a vibe. The second is a contract. The contract is what makes the kill happen.What the plan does not doIt does not replace thinking. The plan is the output of 30 minutes of thinking, not the substitute for it. If I do not have a 30-minute thinking session before I write the plan, the plan will be the same vague project I would have started without the plan, and the plan will not help.It does not guarantee success. The plan is a tool, not a guarantee. I have written plans for projects that did not work, and the plan was right about everything except the project was not the right project. The plan improves the odds, not the outcomes. The plan is necessary but not sufficient.It does not survive contact with reality. Every plan I write is wrong in some specific way once I start executing. The plan is a guess about the future, and the future is not the plan. The plan gets updated weekly during the project, and the weekly update is the part that keeps the plan useful. A plan that is never updated is a plan that is not being used.What I would tell past-meIf I could go back and tell past-me one thing, it would be: the plan is not optional. I have spent probably 2 years of cumulative time on projects that did not ship, most of which would not have started if I had written a 1-page plan first. The cost of not writing the plan was the time on the abandoned projects, which is real, and which adds up.I would also tell past-me: the plan is for you, not for anyone else. The plan is not a document I send to a stakeholder. The plan is a document I write to make myself honest about the project. The plan is the test for whether the project is real. The plan is the test for whether I am committed. The plan is the test for whether I will kill the project when I should. The plan is the cheap part of the project, and the cheap part is the part that determines whether the rest of the project is worth doing.Who this is forAnyone who starts more projects than they finish. Anyone who has a half-finished project graveyard. Anyone who has ever said "I should really finish that thing I started." The plan is for the people who already know the project is real but cannot figure out why it never ships. The answer is usually: no plan. The fix is a plan.The honest partI have written 7 of these plans in the last 12 months. Of the 7, 3 have shipped (the Blog Writing Factory, the static site pivot, the email triage system). 2 are still in progress, with kill dates set for the end of summer. 2 were killed before they started, because the 1-page plan exposed that the MVP was not shippable in a weekend, or the audience was not specific enough, or the kill criterion was not something I would trigger.The 2 I killed before starting were the most valuable plans I wrote. Each one saved me 3-6 months of work on a project that was not going to ship. The plans are the cheap part. The plans are the lever. The plans are the part that makes the rest of the project possible.Want a prompt pack to write your own project plan?The Blog Writing Factory includes a "project plan" prompt that walks you through the 7 sections in 30 minutes. The prompt is the question, the answer is your plan, the plan is the cheap part, the plan is the lever.Buy on Gumroad. $14

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