Whether it's a startup, or a NASA mission, you've a cost cap. All kinds of expenditure such as budget of materials, testing, manufacturing, direct costs, salaries, EREs, MTDC, travel, per diem, flights, hotels, FTE, F&A, total cost margin, launch, and likes have to be outlined clearly. Making a Budget for a project/mission is an extremely important step, and the stepping stone towards the realization of a mere concept!

When you are taking a decision, how often do you make a detailed plan of the risks involved? Risk management allows you to iteratively mitigate the probability of occurrence and the impact of consequences to increase the chance of success!

Understanding the requirements, and how they affect the core systems of the project to proceed to functional analysis is important.

The Functional Analysis is done using the N2 diagrams, etc., to make a robust technical development.

When you're stuck somewhere during the project (especially in a big organization), who do you go to? Look up the Organizational Chart!

Use a project management tool for scheduling and accomplishing tasks- Gantt Charts!