Scope before you build

The most expensive line of code is the one written for the wrong feature. Before any build begins, the question is not 'how do we build this?' but 'what exactly needs to exist, and why?'

A clear scope document does three things: it forces the client to articulate what success looks like, it gives the build team a shared reference when decisions become ambiguous, and it creates a natural milestone structure — each phase is a testable slice of the outcome.

Software built without scope tends to grow sideways. Features accumulate, priorities shift, and the original problem gets buried under well-intentioned additions.

The constraint is the design. Deciding what is out of scope is as important as deciding what is in. A product that does one thing well ships. A product that tries to do everything usually does not.