The next-move method: how a project keeps its momentum

Most projects do not die from a bad decision. They die from a missing one. Somebody closes the laptop on Friday, and on Monday nobody remembers what was supposed to happen next.

A plan answers the question “where are we going?”. It rarely answers the question everyone actually asks when they open the project: “what do I do now?”.

One project, one next move

The method is simple: the first thing anyone sees in a project is a single, concrete next move — not a list, not a roadmap. Everything else in the project exists to make that move obvious and the one after it easy to choose.

If you cannot name the next move, you do not have a project. You have a topic.

Facts, assumptions and decisions

To choose the next move well, a project has to keep three things apart: what we know, what we only believe, and what we have already decided. Mixing them is how teams relitigate the same question for weeks.

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