I think the restaurants were a poor analogy. Much better for me was the rule right at the end: > Innovate on your core product, not on your plumbing (this rul

I think the restaurants were a poor analogy. Much better for me was the rule right at the end: > Innovate on your core product, not on your plumbing (this rule is extremely tempting for developers to break - see next rule) I was first exposed to this during my final year university project in 2004. We had a sponsor who wanted to build a marketplace for tourism operators and B&Bs. I was the only real developer on the team of 4. I worked really hard with little sleep, producing a really great caching layer and a very impressive WYSIWYG editor. But when the project deadline arrived you couldn't even book a room on the site. I still struggle with staying focused; the best technique I've discovered to deal with this is to log ALL work around a project, prioritise the tasks and stick to only working on logged tasks with the highest priorities assigned rather than do whatever I feel like. (It took me even longer to realise what a business opportunity I had lost.)