Habits to Keep Big Projects Moving as an Individual Contributor

During my time at Flipkart, I collaborated on multiple cross-team projects. Here are the habits that helped me manage the chaos and keep releases on track.

1 Question-Storm Early

Questioning and brainstorming early help surface hidden gaps, edge cases, and pitfalls that could become blockers tomorrow and derail timelines.

By actively engaging multiple perspectives, teams turn unknowns into known risks — enabling clearer scoping, more accurate estimates, and shared confidence in the plan.

2 Close Every Loop

When not everyone is in the room, communication gaps form. Maintaining a shared, public journal or Minutes of Meeting (MoM) to document key discussions and decisions not only reduces the chance of miscommunication but also creates a record that shows how the project evolved over time.

3 Kill Tribal Knowledge

If knowledge lives only in one’s head, it vanishes with them. Making it a habit to document technical discussions, tradeoffs, and design rationale in accessible places keeps knowledge circulating within the team.

4 Review Relentlessly

Small design tweaks are cheap; late rewrites are costly. Proactive reviews and constructive feedback at an early stage foster a culture where ideas and code are challenged early, reducing rework and raising overall quality.

5 Log Decisions and Own Outcomes

Every technical decision has context — why it was made, what it aimed to solve, and what corners were consciously cut. Keeping a running log of key decisions helps; if things don’t go as planned, the team can reflect, learn, and adjust with clarity. Owning both decisions and outcomes builds trust and accountability.

6 Time-Box Everything

Work expands to fill whatever time is allotted. Keep meetings focused with clear agendas, and resolve as much as possible offline through public Slack threads for topics that don’t require a call. This keeps discussions transparent and minimizes unnecessary meetings.

7 Keep Stakeholders In The Loop

Proactive communication on concise progress updates and next steps reduces surprises, keeps everyone aligned, and minimizes the need for status meetings.

8 Bridge Tech and Business

Good engineering work should be understood in business terms — cost, risk, and efficiency — not just technical depth. Translating technical decisions into outcomes stakeholders care about by using clear, quantified impact builds trust and drives faster business alignment — much more than technical jargon would.