In addition to what ferretinjapan said, there is also a sticky here.

To quote:

Funding, work start, payments

The project can begin before it's fully funded Devs can be paid for milestone completion before it's fully funded If the dev disappears, no problem, someone else can pick up from their last milestone If the milestones are sufficiently small the dev doesn't have to go 6 months without pay

Ideal FFS Workflow

An idea is presented in the IDEAS thread. A discussion occurs regarding whether the idea should be developed. A developer (who either presented the idea, or saw the idea and realizes they can develop it) pitches their proposal to develop the idea in the OPEN TASKS section. At a minimum, this pitch should include

What - describe the idea and how you plan to develop it

Who - who are you? Why do you think you can develop it, and why should the Monero community believe you can?

Why - Why do you want to develop this?

The Proposal and Milestones - It is difficult to describe how each proposal should be broken down into milestones, but only you (the developer) knows how long things can take, and knows how to break the task apart.

Expiration - Make it apparent that a time limit exists for the proposal. If the project is abandoned, funds will eventually be re-appropriated at the discretion of the core developers. At the minimum, development should start coding "soon" after the funding target has been met in order to avoid re-appropriation.