A realisation on progress

I've inadvertantly managed to make some progess, not physical progress, but psychological progress. A couple of nights ago I woke at 3am and spent the rest of the night mulling over some of the problems I face with this project. I decided to apply some very focussed thought to a single particular problem; that of synchronising data flowing between concurrent circuits (between threads of the same process, between processes on the same machine, and between machines via the network). It wasn't the progress I made on mapping out or solving the problem, it was the realisation that after writing it up yesterday that this was actually useful progress. It now seems an obvious thing to say, but this approach which seems to be along the 'divide and conquer' line may actually be the way forward.

I've tried this approach before, but I don't think I had the right framework in which to accomodate the results such that they would remain useful. Part of the problem has been how best to record my thoughts and expanding design; separate files, big word document, web pages, wiki, spreadsheets, one-note, visio diagrams, database, bespoke tools, etc. Having just tackled a very specific task I was looking for the best place to document it and realised it was really just the fleshing out of a small sub-section of the technical design overview. Not wanting to clutter the overview I rearranged the documents slightly so that this tech design doc acted as the to-do list and fill out another document with the details. This will form a technical implementation guide, some design, some solution, some thinking, and act as an execution plan for all the individual parts.

So, I didn't realise it, but my overview gives me a detailed enough skelton that can be fleshed out bit by bit and more-or-less at random. This means several things:
1. If I get stuck on (or bored) of part of the design I can switch to another.
2. I build up an implimentation guide to follow for when I actually write the code.
3. I am able to design a very large and complex system having broken it down into small parts.
4. I get to see really how large and complex a project this is (eek!).
5. It also breaks the deadlock with the hierarchy navigation UI problem I've been stuck on.

I guess none of this is new wisdom, but coming to the realisation myself is more potent than being taught it. Here's to progress!