1. MAKE A PLAN BEFORE YOU START WRITING YOUR CODE OOP is a great way to compartmentalize software code, but you can get lost in the details if you don’t have a good plan. It’s a good idea to use a tool such as Visio to plan out each class and its properties and methods, for example, before you start coding. Planning ahead ensures the organization of your code is a success before you even write the first line of code. When you’re planning ahead, identify each component of your application and plan methods and properties that would make up a specific class. If you have a customer class, identify what information you need to store for a customer. You might need the customer’s address, name, phone number, and gender. These would be properties of the customer class. Planning helps you identify the components needed for your software, so you won’t forget them and have to go back and refactor your code. 2. DON’T FORGET THE DATABASE Every dynamic web application needs a database. N