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I've been given crazy 0 to 1 projects - How can I scope them out and disambiguate them?

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Mid-Level Software Engineer [E4] at Meta2 years ago

I’m currently working on a 0 to 1 project that’s outside of the team’s scope, so I have no senior engineer on the team to support me and tell me what to do. I have to spend a lot of time piecing things together and it's been rough - I've missed on the team's ship goals as it's hard to move fast enough on this project. How can I make this situation better?

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    Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal
    2 years ago
    • Avoid the trap of needing to understand the code of an area before you start seriously scoping it out. Zoom out hard and view the project at a very high-level.
    • Break down the project into the chunks you'll need. Each chunk should be able to comfortably fit into a task.
    • Once you have these tasks, leverage other people! Find domain experts on each chunk and get their feedback on it, mainly how long it'll take and the risks. A lot of being a good project POC, especially on 0 to 1 projects, is just stitching the powers and knowledge of others together.
    • After assembling all the knowledge, figure out the overall timeline and ask for more resources as necessary. For 0 to 1 projects in particular, the goal is to be not alone as quickly as possible, so you have a full-time behind the effort and don't need to solo carry everything.

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