What is stage one, what is stage two, and what is stage three?

Is there a stage at which actual technical specifications of a coin will happen, or does that depend on how many further stages these first three stages turn out to determine to be needed before details such as what type of coin platform or technology to use and so on can reasonably be discussed?

(e.g. is stage one the determination of what technologies eixst that have a chance of being able to secure a ledger? Or is that magically pre-decided so that your so called stage one is details that already assume a certain type of technology, such as a proof of work blockchain or whatever, so that one discusses things like the minting schedule or the hashing algorithm rather than what base tech to even use to being with?)

-MarkM-