Work out what's required

Now's the time to start to get serious...

By this stage in the game (pun intended) you should have a reasonably strong concept design, you know what the games about, what it does, what it's supposed to achieve. Who the players are, what they're supposed to do, what they're motivation is. You might even have put some thought in to what target hardware you intend to use or support, what you probably DON'T know at this stage is what's acutally required to deliver that finished product to the player (or if your even capable of delivering the finished product).

Fortunately working out what's required is a fairly straightforward (if somewhat laborious) process, you simply sit down with the current design in one hand and a blank sheet of paper in the other and make a list of everything your going to need for your game, I would in fact suggest making several lists, so you can file items under specific categories which will help in managing the assests and making sure that things don't get forgotten (in fact things WILL get forgotten, lot's of them, but making lists like these will help you remember and probably discover many things you didn't realise you need!).

Examples of various categories can be sound effects, music, background art, level design, character art, etc etc but that's only half the story, you'll also need to make a list of the sorts of coding issues you'll face, tools you'll need as well - don't worry if your not 100% sure of the coding issues just try and make the list as complete as you can. If you find yourself lacking in this area then maybe it's time to bring onboard someone with coding experience (see point 9).

Once your got your assets covered (so to speak) then you need to do a skills (or asset) inventory, which is fancy talk for looking down the lists and seeing which of the items that you (or whatever team you currently have) either already have access to, or are capable of producing yourself. As for the rest you'll either have to recruit more team members to create the assets or arrange to buy them in (either for cash, a royalty stake, or some other form of renumeration) - if that is the case then these lists will be invaluable when negotiating with artists or assessing the suitability of a third party toolset.

It may be that you'll have to learn some new skills if your not willing (or able) to make deals with other people, that's ok, but again the lists will help you by giving you some direction in this area and again will allow you to focus your efforts.