Side Project Launch Checklist

What this is

Twelve tasks to get a side project from someday to shipped in roughly six weeks. It's opinionated: the scope is the enemy, and the deadline is the feature.

Cut the scope until it's embarrassing

Every unshipped side project has the same story — it grew. The version you launch should do one thing, for one kind of person, and be missing most of what you imagine it eventually having.

Write down what's in v1 and, more usefully, what's explicitly not. That second list is what protects the first from your own enthusiasm at week three.

Set a public date

Side projects have no external deadline, which is precisely why they run indefinitely. Telling people when it's launching converts an open-ended project into a constrained one, and constrained projects ship.

Build the boring parts early

Payments, auth, hosting, the domain — the unglamorous scaffolding that isn't the interesting part and always takes longer than expected. Doing them last is how a finished product sits unlaunched for a month.

Show it to someone before it's ready

Every week you don't show it is a week of building on assumptions. Five minutes watching one person use it teaches more than a fortnight of refining.

Launching is not one event

The tasks after go-live matter as much as the ones before. One announcement reaches a fraction of the people who'd care; the follow-ups reach the rest, and most projects that flopped were announced once and never mentioned again.

Timing

Turn on due dates and set the start to today. The six-week pacing is the point — extending it is how it becomes a someday project again.