Intro to Shape Up

In 2019, Ryan Singer open-sourced how product development happens at Basecamp in a book called “Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters.”

This presentation is an intro to how Specify leverages Shape Up to define focused projects, address unknowns, and increase collaboration and engagement within the team.

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Transcript

1. @specifyapp
   Intro to
   Shape Up
   

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2. How we leverage Shape Up
   In 2019, Ryan Singer open-sourced how product development happens at
   Basecamp in a book called “Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship
   Work that Matters.”
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   INTRO
   Intro to Shape Up
   This presentation is a short overview of the main ideas in this book.
   And how we apply them at Specify.
   

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3. Stop running in circles
   and start shipping work
   that matters.
   Intro to Shape Up
   INTRO
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   

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4. Making teams responsible
   Targeting risk
   Overview
   Intro to Shape Up
   PRINCIPLES
   4-week cycles
   Shaping the work
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   

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5. 4-week cycles
   PRINCIPLES
   W01
   Intro to Shape Up
   W04
   Build Cooldown
   W03
   First, we work in four-week cycles.
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   Shape Up is originally a six-week cycle. We adapted it to our needs.
   The #1 objective is to ship.
   

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6. Shaping the work
   PRINCIPLES
   Intro to Shape Up
   Second, we shape the work before giving it to a team.
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   A small group works in parallel to the cycle teams.
   They define the key elements of a solution before we consider a project
   ready to work on.
   

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7. Making teams responsible
   PRINCIPLES
   Intro to Shape Up
   Third, we give full responsibility to a small team of designers and
   developers.
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   They define their own tasks, make adjustments to the scope, and work
   together to build vertical slices of the product one at a time.
   It's completely different from other methodologies, where managers chop
   up the work and developers act like ticket-takers.
   

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8. Targeting risk
   PRINCIPLES
   Intro to Shape Up
   At every step of the process we target a specific risk: the risk of not
   shipping on time.
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   In short, the #1 objective is to ship.
   🙂
   Getting it
   done
   Start
   Figuring
   out what
   to do Finish
   

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9. What we built
   in 4-week cycles
   EXAMPLES
   GitHub Integration
   Configuration Templates
   Command-Line Interface
   Intro to Shape Up
   @specifyapp @fmerian
   

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10. Making teams responsible
    Targeting risk
    Recap
    Intro to Shape Up
    PRINCIPLES
    4-week cycles
    Shaping the work
    @specifyapp @fmerian
    

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11. @specifyapp
    Ready?
    Let's ship.
    🦾
    

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