Adam Lantheaume

Get a holistic view of the problem space. If you don't understand what you're trying to do, in the context of where you're trying to do it, it makes it much tougher to get a sustainable win and minimal downstream effects.

Facilitate conversation with those in the know. Stakeholders, users, and other players in the system. They all have insights and perspectives that affect how something needs to be built. I try to extract those nuggets of wisdom, then pass 'em around so everyone can see the different perspectives so it can all get factored in.

Distill clarity from complexity. There's a lot of data, thoughts, ideas and opinions that get wrapped up when you're trying to understand what the core challenges are. I like to pull themes and commonalities out and boil it all down to the areas that need to be addressed.

Be aware of the surroundings. Changes can have impact outside of their immediate radius. The idea is to not be surprised by them. There's often little need to address every possibility each time you make a change, but it's a good idea to be aware of them before flipping the switch on.