Overview

In his book “Shape Up”, Ryan Singer describes the workflow and set of techniques Basecamp has developed over the years to build their project management and collaboration software with the same name.

“Shape Up” covers the process from “shaping” raw ideas into low-risk, time-boxed projects to finally implementing the solution in small teams within 6-week cycles. It also discusses how to fight scope creep and monitor progress during a cycle.

While the term “agile” is not mentioned in a single word throughout the text, I consider this workflow to be a welcome opinion on agile that goes beyond Scrum & Co. and provides a sustainable way of building software.

The book is available online for free, to be read in a browser, or to be downloaded as a PDF.

Key Takeaways

Here are some notes from reading the book, along with a map of some of the keywords that I have assembled while reading ….

Introduction

• first focus on your ability to ship, then on shipping the right thing
• in a nutshell, Shape Up is to first shape a project, then bet on that it can be finished by a small, self-dependent team within six weeks

Principles of Shaping

• wireframes are to concrete to shape work - they allow no creativity
• words are too abstract to shape work - they don’t describe well enough what should be built
• unshaped work is risky and unknown
• shaped work is rough, solved, and bounded
• shaping cannot be scheduled - keep it on a separate track from building so as not to let it delay the whole process
• shaping is done privately to give shapers the option to shelve things and get them back out later

Set Boundaries

• shaping is influenced by an “appetite” defining how much time we’re willing to spend on a certain set of features