It can halt your progress.
Beware of excessive analysis. Obviously analysis is in general a good thing; you need to properly understand the business requirements of the features you are developing. But it is very easy to go overboard with analysis and endlessly discuss the pros and cons of approaches, going back and forth with options. The result is you never actually get to writing code.
Sometimes you simply have to put a stake in the ground, even if it is the wrong stake. You have to start somewhere.
What can help is to get mockups as fast as possible. With this visual aid, decisions come more quickly. Six people imagining things in their head is quite different from seeing a picture, a drawing on a whiteboard, a mockup on a screen. It helps tremendously.
Iterate to a solution. It’s okay if the earliest versions are wrong. They are not the final versions. Sometimes you have to make mistakes in order to determine where you want to go.
Build small pieces. Don’t try to accomplish big-bang waterfall projects. Build a piece here, a piece there. Even if it’s not a working whole, at least you can point at the pieces and use them to drive further decisions.
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