If you join an existing team or are a junior engineer, your first projects may be dictated to you. Often, an organization will hire someone because they have a need that their current team isn't meeting. As you complete the task you were hired for, you'll probably want to start finding projects you want to fix or improve. This chapter will generally focus on starting new projects, but do not underestimate the value of helping out with someone else's work. A great way to learn and grow is to write software with others. By being part of a group trying to implement a piece of software, you often learn about their processes and needs. For example, I found out about a project's broken testing environment because I offered to pick up a small bug that needed fixing. The tests had been broken for months and either no one noticed or no one mentioned it.
All of that aside, if you're looking to start a new project, instead of joining an existing one, you will need to find a problem...