A handful of useful project mantras

You could do a lot worse than following the heuristics set out by this Software Architecture cheat sheet. The tip I need to follow more often is "Is There Another Way"; I frequently get way too caught up in my first idea, which is usually too simplistic or requires too much architecture. The tip I often try to guide people towards is "What If I Didn't Have This Problem?"; routing around problems or trying to reduce them to problems that require less code is a super-powerful judo chop.