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Ryan Singer is the author of Shape Up, a framework that has changed the way modern leaders approach planning and managing software development. As part of the founding team of Basecamp, Ryan deeply influenced the early software-as-a-service industry. Over 17 years, he designed features used by millions and invented processes for designing, developing, and shipping software, evolving from UI Designer to Head of Strategy. He’s now fully focused on supporting product and engineering leaders to enhance the performance of their teams by implementing the Shape Up framework.
In this conversation, we explore:
What would a shaping team look like depending on the company's size and structure?
How can teams incorporate Shaping without putting the big investment of completely dumping the current methodology and process they have in place?
How can more junior team members thrive with the lack of detail that Shape Up promotes?
How does the actual shaping process work?
Common misconceptions about the framework and common challenges teams face.
How to approach work on urgent requests and bug fixes without distracting the team from the planned work?
Ryan talks a lot about time bombs, pieces of work that have a lot of unknowns that pop up during development and delay the release. He explains how shaping can minimize these, by enabling you to identify and address any “time bomb“ before starting the actual development process.
The main idea of the Shape Up framework is to involve both product and engineering in the planning phase. By discussing the scope and shaping the idea together, the team can identify potential bottlenecks or large architectural changes that are time-consuming and can delay the whole project.
With the fixed time, variable scope approach, the team is empowered to adjust the scope of the work to deliver the most value with the same time investment.
It’s a very insightful conversation and I hope it challenges the way you view traditional software development.
Listen now on Apple and Spotify.
Ryan welcomes feedback and insights from teams that are looking to incorporate the Shape Up framework in their day-to-day work. Here’s where you can get in touch with him:
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