Shape Up by Basecamp

Shape Up is a specific methodology published by Basecamp about how to organize product development in an efficient manner, specifically when the organization grows. It also applies dual-track agile as described here even though in a particular way.

Six-Week Cycles

Instead of shorter sprint cycles as with Scrum, Shape Up applies a six-week cadence with the key steps being:

Shaping

Shaping means selecting a relevant problem and sketching the solution at a medium level of abstraction. This exercise is executed by a dedicated team, including PM and designers, on a reasonably abstract level — wireframes are too specific already, but fat marker style is OK. Shaping also addresses boundaries, defines what is out-of-scope, and marks particular risks and rabbit holes. The outcome is a pitch later used in decision-making.

Betting

Betting means presenting the pitches prepared before to management or a product board for decision-making. There is no prioritized backlog or such. There are just a few ideas that the teams might potentially work on next. All else is discarded, assuming that relevant ideas will come back — so there is no need to manage them explicitly. In a dedicated meeting, stakeholders decide what the teams should work on and, thus, bet on it. It’s much like planning but by calling it bets it becomes more evident that there is a commitment to invest and an expected outcome, also a certain risk.

Building

Building, so actually implementing the project with a strict time-box of six weeks. Literally, either a project is finished within 6 weeks or is being killed. After hand-over, implementation is done by cross-functional teams so that value can be delivered incrementally, called slices by Basecamp. Work is organized in specific scope maps and also distinguished as to whether it is about finding out what to do or just execution (see below).

Interesting Elements

Even when the entire Shape Up process is highly specific to Basecamp, there are some elements that are useful also in other contexts:

Fat Marker Sketches

Appetite

Instead of asking engineering for their estimation, complexity, story points, or whatsoever, the appetite is looking at an idea from an investment perspective:

Is it the full six-week cycle? Half of it? So the appetite is applied as a constraint.

Work is Like a Hill

Shape Up considers each work item across two phases:

This is an interesting concept to understand uncertainty and whether, for example, adding more resources will actually help or do more harm to a project.