While in the coffee shop with your co-founder and blank sheets of paper for brainstorming you are in what I refer to as the “hope, vision, promise and potential” phase. Anything is possible and the creative ideas flow each time the two of you meet. Eventually an idea gets shaped to the point of seeming like a project is about to begin. Now what? For goodness sakes, don’t put your hands on the keyboard and start writing code. Instead, use the concepts presented in this article to prepare to take your idea out for a “test drive”.