Key Terms: How to Solve Large Problems
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AGILE
A project management philosophy that emphasizes breaking work into short cycles, delivering working output frequently, and adapting to change rather than following a fixed plan from start to finish.

BACKWARD PLANNING
Building a timeline by starting at the final deadline and working backward to assign intermediate dates to each task. Ensures that the real constraint — the due date — shapes the entire plan.

BUFFER TIME
Extra time added to a schedule to absorb unexpected delays, revisions, or blockers. Without buffer days, any single problem becomes a missed deadline.

CHECK-IN
A structured pause at a set point in a project to review your progress, compare it to the plan, and decide whether any adjustments are needed. Effective check-ins happen before the deadline, not at it.

DELIVERABLE
A specific, tangible output that a project must produce — a report, a prototype, an outline, a deployed application. Identifying all deliverables at the start tells you what the finished project actually requires.

DEPENDENCY
A task that cannot begin until another task is completed. Identifying dependencies early prevents situations where multiple tasks are blocked because one foundational piece was not done first.

EPIC
In project management (particularly Agile), a large unit of work that can be broken into smaller tasks called stories. An epic might be "build the login system" while individual stories are the smaller pieces within it.

MICRO-TASK
A single, concrete action that can be completed in one sitting. If a task still feels overwhelming, it is still too large to be a micro-task. Breaking work into micro-tasks makes it easier to start and easier to track progress.

MILESTONE
A significant point in a project timeline that marks the completion of a major phase or deliverable. Milestones help measure progress and signal when the project is on track.

MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT (MVP)
The simplest version of something that is complete enough to be functional and useful. In academic work, this might be a first draft that covers all required sections rather than a polished final version.

POST-MORTEM
A structured reflection done after a project or failure to analyze what happened, what went wrong, and what to do differently next time. More useful than vague intentions to "do better."

PROJECT SCOPE
The defined boundaries of what a project includes and does not include. Scope creep — when the project gradually expands beyond what was originally planned — is a common reason projects run over time and over budget.

ROADBLOCK
An obstacle that prevents progress on a task or a project. Identifying potential roadblocks before starting a project is part of good planning, not pessimism.

WORK BREAKDOWN STRUCTURE (WBS)
A hierarchical decomposition of a project into smaller, manageable components. Starts with the final deliverable and divides it into phases, then tasks, then individual actions.