You Don’t Need to Know Everything When Working on Large Projects

Simple Steps on how to manage large and unfamiliar projects

When you think you’ve learnt something new, you find out you don’t know much. We all know the famous quote saying:

“If you think you know everything, you know nothing”.

As a programmer, I have found that programming can enjoyable, painful and fun all at once. However, as a beginner, one thing to keep in mind is that you can’t know everything and you don’t need to know everything about a language to start. I had a different view when I was at university, but I soon learned, you cannot know everything. All you need is to be adaptable.

Continually learning isn’t just applicable to programming. In many areas of life, you have to keep learning to grow and progress. As a programmer, I have learnt that the more you focus on learning everything about a programming language, the more you know how much you don’t know. It can prove to be a gigantic task, but focusing on specific areas for various tasks will increase your knowledge incrementally.

An interesting quote I found recently explains the learning process:

“Study as if you know nothing. Work as if you can solve anything.”

Also, You must know the famous saying:

“If asked to do something you don’t know how to do, say yes, then learn how to do it.”

In most cases, we seldom have the experience to do certain things in life. The most important thing is, how do you approach it? We’re assigned new projects at work that we may need to use new technology. If we relied on what we knew, we’d not be able to get anything done. How we approach these projects ensures that we’re able to learn and perform our tasks simultaneously.

The steps involved in approaching large tasks:

• Break it down into smaller tasks.
• Find what you need to perform each task.
• Learn how to do each part of the project.
• Execute.

Repeat this incrementally, and you’ll find you get more done quickly and efficiently than when you try to attack the entire project at once. These helped me manage my assignments through my final year at university and into my first years as a software engineer.

As a programmer, I’ll give some steps I follow while working on projects. They can be applied to any discipline and any project not just software related:

What you shouldn’t do:

❌ Don’t try doing everything at once. ❌ Don’t rush into it without confirming requirements. ❌ Don’t go blindly into a project without a plan. ❌ Don’t accept all the client’s conditions. Challenge them. ❌ Not every fancy requirement the client gives is needed. ❌ Don’t wait till the end to test the entire project. ❌ If you’re stuck, don’t wait or waste time repeating yourself. ❌ Don’t release until you’re sure it has met the requirements.

What you can do:

✅ Ask questions to confirm requirements: 1. “what” you’re doing. 2. “why” is it needed? 3. “how” can it be done? 4. “when” should it be done? ✅ Break large tasks down into smaller units. ✅ Plan the time to spend on each unit. ✅ Research and get the tools you need ready. ✅ Start and test each unit as you make progress. ✅ If you’re stuck, “ask Google” or someone who knows. ✅ Evaluate and check every requirement has been met. ✅ Complete project — maintain and keep up to date.

Following these steps will allow you to be more effective. You know the saying: “If you want to eat an elephant, cut it into smaller pieces”. That’s the way you can finish an elephant. Applying this will make those big projects you struggle with more manageable.

These are just some simple steps to take. There are many methodologies available to follow, such as the Agile methodology, waterfall and some others. The important thing is to find what works best for you, and use it to your advantage.