> (Of course, we don't do Shape Up in exactly the way described in the book: rather than cargo-culting, we've tailored the process to fit our business, which is a very different business to Basecamp. Happy to offer more detail if anyone is interested.)
Sure, would love to hear more about your use of Shape Up. What have you found that has worked in your context that goes beyond the initial framework, for example? :)
- As I mentioned, our business is very different to Basecamp's. We're a technology driven MR and insights consultancy that is increasingly platform and product focussed. As such we have four or five different customer/stakeholder groups, each with their own requirements. Our betting table is therefore larger, and includes representatives from each of these groups, as well as our product managers, and some technical representatives. This makes the meeting tougher to wrangle but does give everyone a voice. Like Basecamp, the CEO and I have final say over what the teams actually work on, but we've only overridden a betting table decision once.
- Our pitches include an ROI estimation. It's not particularly detailed, and we originally used something like t-shirt sizing. We now just give an estimated range. This helps us to have a more dispassionate discussion about which work to prioritise.
- We are about to implement a change to the way we shape pitches, to break this up into two phases which run across two cycles. The first phase will focus on clarity about the problem we're trying to solve, the value of solving it, and our investment appetite. We'll then make decisions about which pitches we want to take to the second phase, which is a kind of extended validation, and will be where more research is carried out, and proposed solutions are roughed out. This should help us more effectively manage workload around pitch preparation, and ensure pitches are ready for teams to start work on at the beginning of cycles where they are prioritised.
- We have regular check-ins with business stakeholders throughout each project, and they are involved in decision-making around any changes of direction or scope, or trade-offs that need to be made.
- We have strong guidance in place for the teams around where they should be throughout the cycle: e.g., when they need to stop adding functionality, and focus on delivery; derisking each project, which should happen early, when UX testing should occur, etc.
- We do sometimes reprioritise our strategic roadmap to ensure that we are adding necessary functionality to our platform in order to bid for and service high value client projects; such projects still get oversight from the betting table and could, at least in theory, be deprioritised if there were serious objections.
It's not all been plain sailing though. For example, we still struggle to appropriately shape small batch projects, and getting people outside of tech onboard with creating pitches is an uphill battle, though one we are slowly winning.
That's really fascinating, thanks so much! I like the sound of your two cycle pitch approach -- kind of putting 'measure twice, cut once' into practice. And I admire your ability to wrangle a larger betting table & bring others into the pitching process!
Sure, would love to hear more about your use of Shape Up. What have you found that has worked in your context that goes beyond the initial framework, for example? :)