[silvarilon]

Not quite the same idea, but similar. I keep telling our staff to "Think big, bug plan small"

Think of the dream system. "I want fishing, where you can find different worms by digging in the garden, or other bait, use reels, lines, or nets. Get different times of lines. And then catch different types of fish. And there should be skills involved that the characters can learn."

Then plan small
"I'll make a fishing rod, which you can "cast" and then, after 30 seconds, it'll tell you if you've caught a fish."

That way you can get something coded and working ASAP. You can then continue building on it (make it catch random fish) and work up (make it catch different fish based on your skill roll) until you have the dream system. Knowing what you're aiming for means you can design the earlier steps so you don't paint yourself into a corner. It also means you can stop somewhere in the middle of the process, and have a working, releasable system. And you can always go back and continue improving later.

It's doubly nice, because other staff can build off your system. Someone building a cooking system might start writing code to allow players to cook fish. That code can go into the game even if the fishing system isn't complete, as long as it's complete enough for players to "cast rod" and get a fish.