Preparation

In my experience, there's always a movie at the start of an investigation. Essentially the calm before the storm. While these movies rarely correlated with the investigation at all. They did provide ample time to start preparing for the storm which is the average IDL investigation. Preparations include things such as, whether you want to work in a team, what resources are available, and most importantly; what your product will be. While every investigation differs in how a product should be implemented, as long as you stick to one idea that's been brainstormed, you'll be fine.