Questions before the plan

It works better the other way round.

Before anything is built, a handful of plain questions carry most of the load. Who exactly is this for, not everyone, but the first few dozen people who would genuinely miss it if it disappeared? What will be different for them afterwards? When the first of them mentions it to a friend over dinner, what will she actually say, in her own words? And what is it asking people to give up, since every change asks for something?

None of these needs research to ask. Each needs nerve to answer, because honest answers tend to shrink the idea. The audience gets smaller. The promise gets narrower. Something that sounded exciting in general sounds modest in particular.

One of them is worth keeping on a card by the door. Can this be said in a single sentence, and will it be hard to keep to? A sound direction is usually both: easy enough that anyone involved can repeat it, demanding enough that there will be a dozen tempting reasons to drift from it every month.

Weak ones tend to be the reverse, difficult to explain and easy to abandon.

The answers will change as the work goes on, and they should. What has to stay is the habit of asking, so that each new turn begins with a question instead of a guess dressed up as a decision.