How and when do you break down a project into tasks?

Question

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you approach breaking down a project into actionable tasks.

When do you typically do this?

Is it right at the beginning—where you create a P0 task and split things from there? Or do you let things evolve a bit and refine the breakdown as you go?

How do you do it?

I’ve tried vertical slicing—it worked in some cases, but in others it led to lots of PRs under a single ticket and made each ticket heavier than ideal. I’ve also tried sequencing, but curious if there are other factors you consider when structuring the breakdown.

One thing I personally struggle with is taking the time upfront to decompose the work. I sometimes hesitate—worried I’m not making visible progress, and that ends up being counterproductive in the long run. 😅

Would love to hear any approaches, patterns, or even pitfalls you’ve learned from! ty

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

When do you typically do this?  As soon as you get the task/project ideally. Of course, you always need to be ready to free-style. Requirements can change all the time, especially at the best tech companies which are fast moving. Another angle is that you realize that you scoped the task incorrectly (e.g. there's this massive edge case I missed and now I need to rearchitect), so you have to go back and rescope.  How do you do it?  Here's an example from the code quality course:   I highly recommend this other thread as well: How do I make software less overwhelming?  My general advice is try to envision the code and then break it down into sub-tasks. Each sub-task should be 1 PR ideally (but not the end of the world if it's multiple).

How and when do you break down a project into tasks?

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