A Smarter Way to Build Products

Adapting Shape Up involves tailoring its principles to your team’s reality, considering factors like team size, skills, and existing processes.

"It's not a universal thing. The amount of detail that the team is gonna feel helps them is a dial that we can turn that depends on who's on the team."

• Customize the level of detail and process to suit your team's strengths and weaknesses.
• Involve team members appropriately to maximize their contributions.
• Flexibility ensures Shape Up works effectively within different organizational contexts.

Setting a maximum project cycle of six weeks allows teams to see into the future sufficiently to plan and deliver, reducing risks associated with longer timelines.

"Six weeks is kind of the maximum that we can see into the future, where we could actually say... how do we work backward and figure out something we could build in that six weeks."

• Six-week cycles strike a balance between ambitious goals and manageable scope.
• Helps teams plan realistically and avoid overcommitment.
• Encourages delivering meaningful, shippable products within set periods.

Shape Up helps companies retain the agility and efficiency of a startup by formalizing processes that adapt as the company grows.

"That's exactly what became Shape Up—how do we hold on to that as much as possible."

• Formalize processes that capture the essence of startup agility.
• Adapt methods to scale without losing efficiency.
• Shape Up provides a framework to sustain rapid, focused development.

Collaborative, intense shaping sessions help teams figure out the core ideas quickly, leveraging collective expertise for better solutions.

"They were these short, very, very intense sessions where you're trying to crack the nut together... What's the concept?"

• Collaborative sessions accelerate problem-solving and idea refinement.
• Involves diverse perspectives leading to innovative solutions.
• Helps teams align early, reducing misunderstandings later.

Assigning whole ideas to teams, rather than splitting projects into numerous tickets, increases engagement and ownership among team members.

"We don't want to do the... paper shredder... where you take an idea and then you split it into 100 tickets... Instead, we want to have a whole idea, give it to a team."

• Teams better understand the project vision when given whole ideas.
• Enhances collaboration and reduces fragmentation of work.
• Fosters accountability and enables creative problem-solving.

Involving engineers in shaping sessions ensures the right level of detail, preventing over-specification that stifles creativity or under-specification that leads to confusion.

"If you have an engineer there... they're saying, yeah, I know exactly what to go build."

• Engineers contribute technical insights early in the process.
• Collaboration avoids unfeasible designs and ensures practical solutions.
• Teams achieve clarity, saving time and avoiding rework.

Instead of extending deadlines, vary the scope of projects to fit within set time constraints, ensuring timely delivery and focused efforts.

"How do we come up with an idea that's going to work in the amount of time that the business is interested in spending?"

• Adjust project scope to fit within predetermined time limits.
• Focus on delivering core value within constraints.
• This approach keeps teams aligned with business priorities and prevents timeline overruns.

As companies grow, maintaining the startup way of working becomes challenging, necessitating a formalized process to keep teams efficient and aligned.

"We did reach a point where it's like, oh, this isn't going to automatically, organically just keep spreading as we hire... That's when Shape Up as a framework started."

• Recognize when organic processes no longer scale with company growth.
• Implement formal frameworks like Shape Up to maintain efficiency.
• Structured processes help onboard new team members and preserve agility.

Involving engineers, product managers, and designers in shaping sessions leads to better solutions that fit within time constraints.

"What we need to do in a shaping session is we come out with some kind of diagram where engineers, product, and design, they're saying we understand that."

• Collaborate cross-functionally in shaping sessions to align on feasible solutions.
• Engineers can identify technical challenges early, preventing surprises later.
• This shared understanding empowers teams to deliver successful projects.

Setting a maximum time limit, or 'appetite,' for projects helps ensure teams can see the end from the beginning and deliver meaningful work within constraints.

"We're going to go the other way around, and we're going to say, what is the maximum amount of time we're willing to go before we actually finish something?"

• Set a fixed time ('appetite') for projects to control scope and enhance focus.
• Work backward from the time limit to shape ideas that can be completed within it.
• This approach prevents endless projects and helps teams deliver value predictably.