When embarking on your journey as a developer, designer, entrepreneur, or creator, you’ll inevitably face a crucial decision: should you focus on building many small projects or dedicate your time and resources to a few large ones? This question shapes not only your portfolio but also your learning trajectory, market positioning, and ultimately, your success.

The answer isn’t straightforward, as both approaches offer distinct advantages and challenges. Your optimal path depends on your goals, experience level, available resources, and even your personality. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore both strategies in depth, helping you make an informed decision that aligns with your unique circumstances.

The Case for Small Projects: Diversity, Speed, and Learning

Building multiple small projects offers a range of benefits that make it an attractive strategy for many creators. Let’s examine why you might want to pursue this approach.

Accelerated Learning Through Variety

Small projects expose you to a wider array of challenges, technologies, and domains. Each new project presents an opportunity to learn something different:

For example, a web developer building five different small applications might work with React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, and vanilla JavaScript, gaining insights into the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. This breadth of knowledge can be invaluable in adapting to new technologies in the future.

Faster Feedback Loops

Small projects can typically be completed in days or weeks rather than months or years. This rapid completion cycle offers several advantages:

Consider a mobile app developer who releases a new simple app every month. By the end of a year, they’ll have twelve opportunities to learn from market feedback, versus someone who spent the entire year on a single complex app that might miss the mark.

Lower Risk Profile

Spreading your efforts across multiple projects naturally distributes risk:

For freelancers or agencies, having multiple smaller client projects means that losing any single client won’t be catastrophic to the business.

Broader Network Building

Multiple projects often mean engaging with different communities, clients, or user groups:

A designer working on projects spanning e-commerce, healthcare, education, and entertainment will build connections across these industries, potentially opening doors to future opportunities.

Real-World Success Stories: Small Projects Approach

Many successful creators have built their careers through multiple small projects:

The Power of Large Projects: Depth, Impact, and Mastery

While small projects offer many advantages, focusing on fewer, larger projects presents its own compelling benefits. Let’s explore why you might choose this path.

Deeper Expertise Development

Large projects push you to develop profound knowledge in specific areas:

An engineer working on a large-scale e-commerce platform will develop deep knowledge about performance optimization, security, payment processing, and inventory management that wouldn’t be required for a simple landing page.

Greater Potential Impact

Large projects can achieve things that small ones simply cannot:

Consider how platforms like WordPress, Shopify, or Airbnb could never have achieved their impact as small, limited projects. Their value comes precisely from their comprehensive nature and the ecosystem they’ve built over time.

Enhanced Team Skills

Large projects typically require collaboration, teaching valuable team skills:

A developer working on an enterprise application will need to collaborate with designers, product managers, QA testers, and business stakeholders, building vital soft skills alongside technical ones.

Higher Barriers to Competition

Complex projects create moats that protect your work from easy replication:

Facebook’s dominance wasn’t established by being first (it wasn’t), but by building a complex platform with network effects that made it difficult for users to switch to competitors.

Real-World Success Stories: Large Projects Approach

Many remarkable achievements have come from dedicated focus on large projects:

Finding Your Balance: Factors to Consider

The ideal approach for you depends on various factors. Let’s examine the key considerations that should influence your decision.

Your Experience Level

Where you stand in your learning journey significantly impacts which approach might be more beneficial:

A novice programmer might start with simple calculator apps, small games, and basic websites before attempting to build a complex web application with authentication, database integration, and advanced features.

Your Goals and Aspirations

Different objectives call for different project strategies:

Available Resources

Your constraints will naturally influence what’s feasible:

Market Conditions

External factors should also shape your strategy:

In the mature word processing market, a small, simple text editor would struggle against established comprehensive solutions like Microsoft Word, while in emerging fields like AI tools, simple, focused applications can still gain significant traction.

Hybrid Approaches: Getting the Best of Both Worlds

Rather than viewing this as a binary choice, consider how you might combine elements of both strategies for optimal results.

The Stepping Stone Method

Start with smaller projects that build toward a larger vision:

This approach combines the quick feedback and lower risk of small projects with the eventual impact of a larger project. For example, Facebook started as a simple directory for Harvard students before gradually expanding features and reach.

The Platform and Plugins Model

Build a core platform (large project) with multiple smaller extensions:

WordPress exemplifies this approach, with its core CMS representing the large project, while themes and plugins represent numerous smaller projects that extend its functionality.

The 80/20 Portfolio Balance

Allocate your resources proportionally between project types:

This balanced approach provides stability through your main projects while maintaining the learning and exploration benefits of smaller ones. Google’s “20% time” policy (though now largely abandoned) exemplified this philosophy, allowing engineers to spend a portion of their time on smaller side projects while maintaining focus on core products.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Regardless of which approach you choose, be wary of these common mistakes:

For the Small Projects Approach:

For the Large Projects Approach:

Practical Strategies for Implementation

Once you’ve decided on your approach, consider these practical strategies for successful execution:

For Multiple Small Projects:

  1. Time Boxing: Set strict time limits for each project (e.g., “one week per project”) to prevent endless tinkering.
  2. Themed Batching: Group similar projects together to leverage knowledge transfer while still maintaining variety.
  3. Public Commitment: Announce your projects publicly to create accountability for completion.
  4. Template Systems: Create reusable templates or boilerplates to accelerate the startup phase of new projects.
  5. Ruthless Prioritization: Be willing to abandon or archive projects that aren’t delivering value.

For Larger Projects:

  1. Milestone Planning: Break the large project into smaller, achievable milestones with clear completion criteria.
  2. Regular Demos: Schedule frequent demonstrations of progress to maintain motivation and gather feedback.
  3. Risk-First Development: Tackle the riskiest or most uncertain aspects early to validate fundamental assumptions.
  4. Celebration Points: Define moments to celebrate achievements along the way, not just at final completion.
  5. Accountability Partners: Engage mentors, peers, or coaches to help maintain momentum during challenging phases.

Evolving Your Approach Over Time

Remember that your optimal strategy will likely change as your career progresses:

Be prepared to reassess your approach periodically based on changing circumstances, new opportunities, and evolving interests.

Making Your Decision: A Framework

To help you decide which approach is right for your current situation, ask yourself these key questions:

  1. Learning Needs: Do I need breadth of exposure to many technologies, or depth in specific areas?
  2. Risk Tolerance: Am I comfortable concentrating my efforts, or do I prefer spreading risk?
  3. Feedback Requirements: How quickly do I need to see results and receive feedback?
  4. Available Support: Do I have the resources, team, or mentorship needed for larger projects?
  5. Market Opportunity: Which approach better addresses the needs in my target market?
  6. Personal Satisfaction: Which type of work brings me more fulfillment and motivation?

Your honest answers to these questions will guide you toward the approach that best aligns with your current circumstances.

Conclusion: Finding Your Path

The question of whether to focus on many small projects or a few large ones doesn’t have a universal answer. Both approaches offer valuable benefits and come with distinct challenges.

For many creators, the journey begins with multiple smaller projects to build foundational skills, confidence, and a diverse portfolio. As expertise grows, gradually shifting toward larger, more ambitious projects often becomes both feasible and rewarding.

The most successful creators typically don’t rigidly adhere to either extreme. Instead, they thoughtfully balance their efforts based on their current goals, resources, and market conditions. They recognize that small and large projects serve different purposes in their professional development and strategic positioning.

Ultimately, the best approach is one that:

By thoughtfully considering these factors, you can craft a project strategy that maximizes both your growth and your impact, whether that means building many small projects, focusing on a few large ones, or finding your own balanced approach between these options.

Remember that the journey itself—with its challenges, learnings, and accomplishments—is often as valuable as the destination. Whichever path you choose, approach it with purpose, persistence, and a willingness to adapt as you grow.