When you go to write an essay, the introduction is the hardest part. But the introduction is literally the most important part because it will present a layout for the rest of the essay. Initiating a project idea is like writing an introduction to that essay. To do it you have to have a clear understanding of what a project is. From the notes we learned that projects have limited life spans, performance requirements and clear objectives. Test your idea against those characteristics and see if it fits. Layout more than one idea and pick the most feasible one in terms of these characteristics. When I write a new matlab program at work (project) I make sure that I understand the purpose of it (the problem it’s trying to address). I think of different ways to approach it and choose the most efficient way (least lines of code that will give me accurate results). I then try to implement this within a certain time frame and with a limited amount of money from my company.