First Things First

One of the SevenHabitsOfHighlyEffectivePeople, which is situated amongst other habits to form the following basic tenet:

Once you have identified your high-level goals, focus on completing the next most obvious low-level goal that you have to complete.

See also: NextList

Based on TheHeartOfChange

When there is a raging fire, do not spend time looking at fire prevention [mechanisms].

Sometimes it's difficult to figure out how to get started on a problem. Many problem spaces present a large number of choices for reasonable starting-points, and choices might seem equally viable. The particular domain might, however, have an inherent 'first thing' that, in addition to being low-hanging fruit, allow a useful prototype to be developed that much more quickly(an example is a game, where title screen, save/load screen, character creation/selection screen, &c are fairly simple to implement on their own and help set the theme for the gaming experience).

'Therefore:' Find the piece of functionality closest to the initial user experience. Write the minimum amount of code to make it usable/meet requirements. If you're not sure where to go next, try to apply FirstThingsFirst again. -- JoeOsborn

Stone carvers often say that what they were carving was already in the stone and that they're just revealing it. Is what I'm designing already there, and I'm just revealing it? TestFirst really gives you that feeling... --BruceIde

That's a very nice metaphor...