A client I'm working with wanted a set of initial decisions and questions their team should address as they begin a new project. I did a bit of research, thinking surely such a list must exist already, but I didn't find one I liked. So I made an open source one and put it on GitHub. If you just want to jump to it now, check out the Ultimate New Software Project Decision Checklist.

In coming up with the list, I broke down the decisions by the kinds of questions they ask. Specifically, I tried to break most of the questions up based on Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Related to Who, though, I added a specific set of questions and decisions for how the team will communicate, since I think this set of decisions deserves to stand on its own.

The checklist isn't platform-specific. It should work regardless of whether you're building an ASP.NET Core app or a native iOS app or a JavaScript server app running on node. Not every question will necessarily apply to you - just skip the ones that don't. But after a quick scan of the list, you should be able to identify the ones that you think do apply, and you can use that list as your own project's checklist. It will typically benefit your project and your team to answer as many of the questions on your checklist as early as possible in the life of your new project.

The list: Ultimate New Software Project Decision Checklist

For reference, here are some similar lists I found before I gave up and decided to come up with my own. Some of these relate more to product marketing and startups than internal or general software projects.

• Checklist for starting an ASP.NET MVC 3 project (StackExchange)
• Ultimate Checklist for Developing a New Software Project
• Software project best practices checklists
• Project Planning Checklist
• What would you add in this Software Development Project Checklist (StackExchange)
• List of Cross-Cutting Concerns

If you find the checklist helpful, give it a star on GitHub and share it somewhere on social media. Thanks!