{
  "id": "make-the-smallest-version",
  "number": "052",
  "edition": "Practice",
  "title": "Make the smallest version",
  "standfirst": "Reduce the idea until reality can answer you.",
  "when": "The imagined project is too large to begin, test or explain clearly.",
  "way": "A project becomes easier to understand when some part of it exists outside your head. The smallest useful version is not a diminished final product. It is a question made tangible enough for materials, people and circumstances to answer.",
  "tryThis": "Identify the one uncertainty that matters most. Make only enough of the project to encounter that uncertainty in the real world.",
  "notice": "What did making reveal that planning could not?",
  "person": "Steve Wozniak",
  "source": "The Contemporary Blueprint archive",
  "quote": "Don’t necessarily think you have to hit a home run on your first try — or build the “huge Apple computer” right out of the gate.\nI spent a long time building little devices just for fun. And fun is one of the key things, because it drives you to think, and think, and think — and make it better and better and better — in a way you rarely do when you’re building for a company.\nAt first, build things for yourself — things you’d genuinely want to use.",
  "sourceUrl": "https://youtu.be/uJ2C7H2DI-4",
  "contexts": [
    "begin",
    "stuck",
    "decide"
  ],
  "free": true,
  "related": [
    "test-one-uncertainty",
    "find-the-repeated-move",
    "build-before-explaining"
  ],
  "sourceArchive": "The Contemporary Blueprint",
  "referenceKind": "quotation",
  "referenceExcerpt": "I spent a long time building little devices just for fun. And fun is one of the key things, because it drives you to think, and think, and think — and make it better and better and better — in a way you rarely do when you’re building for a company."
}