(Written for MAAWG, but it applies to many efforts. It should be noted that this is not anybody's official statement; it's just me blathering.)

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency." -- Daniel Hudson Burnham

There are many different ways to develop a plan. Some -- including what we're attempting here -- involve defining the problem we're trying to solve, before we try to solve it. Crazy, I know, yet it tends to be fairly effective not only for the kinds of issues we're dealing with in MAAWG, but also for the kinds of minds common to this industry.

For this technique to succeed, we also need to understand some of the possible results of our effort.