The handoff is where most projects rot. Our checklist for moving a design into code without losing intent. This is the longer version — what we have learned shipping these for real clients, and the trade-offs nobody mentions in the sales deck.
Start with the constraint, not the feature
Every good build begins by naming the one constraint that matters most — performance, editability, time-to-launch — and ruthlessly subordinating everything else to it. Teams that try to optimise for all of them at once ship slowly and please no one. We write the constraint on the wall and re-read it at every decision point.
Make the boring parts boring
The interesting part of a project is usually 10% of the work. The other 90% — auth, data modelling, error states, empty states, accessibility — is where quality actually lives. We standardise those so the team can spend its creativity where it changes the outcome, not re-litigating solved problems on every job.
“Ship the smallest thing that is genuinely good, then let real usage tell you what to build next.”
That is the whole method, really. Pick the constraint, make the foundations boring and reliable, ship something small and excellent, and iterate against real signal instead of imagined requirements. It is not glamorous, but it is why our work tends to still be running — and still being paid for — years after launch.
