Shape Up, My Year In
I am privileged to now be entering the second year using the Shape Up methodology, and I can’t find a flaw! It enables a team to build a great product by offering a framework that; ensures no one is burnt out, creativity is flowing, scope is maintained and issues are addressed.
My intentions in this blog are to; share, summarize and explain my perception of the Shape Up product development methodology. If you would like a comprehensive guide, and or your thinking about adopting the methodology, then read the free Shape Up book — As of writing it's 176 pages and a worthy read!
Finally, I would like to give credit to the Shape Up book for any image, stated otherwise, and the great Shape Up team I work with!
What is Shape Up?
Shape Up is a product development methodology, specifically for, and in my case, software products. At its basics, it starts with a two-week Shaping session where all participants within the team, that might be; engineers, managers, members of product and external contributors, collaborate on various ideas and produce ‘Pitches’. Towards the end of the two-week shaping session, stakeholders will meet at the Betting table to bet on each pitch, those pitches with the highest bets will be selected for the upcoming six-week Development phase.
The Development phase starts and those that may be; engineers, designers and other technical team members implement, and readjust each pitch to how they see fit. When the work and or time is up the outcome is assessed to ensure that it aligns with its original pitch, if so great! and if not the remaining work should go back into Shaping.
Finally, as well as Shaping, the concept of Cool Down is where you use the two-week gap between each development phase as a time to fix bugs, explore new ideas and or experiment with new technical possibilities.
- Shaping
- Betting
- Development
- Cool Down
- Repeat
Shaping
This is the process in which members of the team collaborate on ideas and product pitches. How you collaborate on ideas is really up to you, and the Shape Up book goes further into various ways to shape something.
The pitch itself should be filled with ideas, thoughts and comments from not just yourself but other members of the team too. It should be a document, formatted and presentable and should consist of five key ingredients:
- Problem
- Appetite
- Solution — High-level concepts, not overly technical as applicable
- Rabbit Holes
- No-Goes
I'm going to leave most of those ingredients as self-explanatory however, the Appetite and No-Goes are both what I am going to bring to your attention.
Appetite is there to ensure that work doesn't go on forever, you can use concepts like shirt and batch sizes, or rough guidelines like one or two weeks but don't forget each cycle is eight weeks long, and only six of those do you work on shaped pitches. Once the work has consumed all its appetite you simply stop the work, and put the remaining back into shaping!
No-Goes are there so that scope is maintained. Rome wasn't built in a day. There will always be something else and those No-Go items should be turned into pitches if they are of value to you.
Finally, to host and write your pitch documents I would like to point out the following:
They both are great collaboration tools and allow you to comment/share and propose updates to working documents. I personally don't like Google Doc simply because it doesn't allow you to use code blocks.
Betting
This is really straightforward, stakeholders study the pitches and match them to goals, and whatever pitch meets the criteria and has the; clearest problem, bounded solution and no-goes defined should be betted on. You should take into consideration how many members are on your team and the appetite for each pitch.
Development
Given that the betting has taken place and everyone understands what's being worked on, the development team are free to implement each pitch as and how they see fit. It may be a good idea to use a tool such as Trello to organise who is covering what. Those who are implementing the pitches should feel inspired to adjust the scope of the project to overcome technical barriers.
I have personally been working in and out of development phase’s for over a year now, and I can say that many of my pitches have come from finding; bugs, capabilities and opportunities while being hands-on with said product. Don't be afraid to document your ideas in some form of draft pitch and come back to it during Cool Down.
Cool Down
This is when you should take your hands away from direct product development and focus on being collaborative, creative and reflective.
For engineers, this is a great time to refactor any technical debt, improve test coverage and fix blockers in the development workflow.
For those imaginative, it's perfect to explore new technical concepts and come up with prototypes.
For product development, it's a time to shape and pitch new ideas and improvements.
Overall, I think that if you really embrace Cool Down you will see lots of benefits, firstly in morale and then thereafter advancements in your product.
What Benefits Does It Bring?
No One Is Burnout
The boundaries, appetite and no-goes are defined when pitching, this means that the work is fairly unambiguous. Having a clear view of what is needed to be done ensures that those working on the technical side of things don't experience scope creep, and projects won't feel like they go on forever.
Creativity Is Flowing
Shape Up has the Shaping and Cool Down concepts that each provide a platform for team members to come up and propose new ideas and solutions.
Shaping enables members of the team to collaborate, discuss and pitch new ideas and improvements.
Cool Down ensures that people aren't overwhelmed and that they have time to address, experiment and propose better solutions.
Scope Is Maintained
The product and technical members of the team have collaborated and mapped out the boundaries, appetite and no-goes before development starts. Due to this collaborative pre-planning, it's reasonable to assume that both parties know what needs to be done.
Issues Are Addressed
Shaping provides a mechanism for which each member of the team should feel empowered to write a pitch and put it on the betting table. This empowerment enables for example engineers to pitch architectural refactors.
How Can I Get Started?
I think that the best way you can start with Shape Up is to start Shaping. Get together with your team and discuss all the ideas, improvements and fixes you want to make, and work together to ensure each item has a pitch put together. Pitches will take some time to produce, so don't be disheartened if you haven't pitched everything that needs to be done. Again I suggest using some form of a board such as Trello to track items that need to be pitched, and items that already have been pitched.
Then it comes to the Betting Table, taking into consideration the goals of your product and the appetite, quality, difficulty in each pitch and bet based on those factors. You may find some pitches just aren't ready and they should go back into shaping.
Development should begin, it's important to trust those working on the development to get it done how they see fit, and those not working on the development this could be a great opportunity to shape and pitch further ideas. I believe that shaping should be more of a continuous process with simply an emphasis during the two-week cooldown.
Finally, Cool-Down comes and it will give you a chance to re-shape new ideas, and address anything that will improve the quality of the product.
- Shaping
- Betting
- Development
- Cool Down
- Repeat
