- Planning
- Materials
- Setup
- Production
- Breakdown
- Cleanup
I added materials, since you’re not going to get much of anywhere without them. Sure, you could consider that part of either the planning or the setup stage, but I feel that materials should be explicitly stated as well.
I guess on that same note, tools count in as materials for sake of this list. Any which way, if you don’t have all the stuff you need to do the thing, you’re going to hit a roadblock in your project.
And always keep at least 3 extra 10mm sockets around, just in case…
Breakdown is probably a non-military version of “debriefing”. Just because you completed the project, doesn’t mean that there are’t obstacles you didn’t initially account for that you’ll need to address during the project. It also helps to break down (heh) how successful the project was, or if there will be follow up actions. Then you cleanup once unknown unknowns are taken care of.
Yeah, there’s sort of that too, but my dad learned these steps from the US Navy. Still, generally speaking, these steps basically apply to any project in some way or another.