Shapeup – An Alternative to Scrum

basecamp.com

4 points·michidk··2 comments

I think the strongest parts of Shape Up are the betting table and the circuit breaker. The betting table is where 2-3 company leaders select projects employees will work on from all the pitched ones. The circuit breaker is a calendar date, circled at the beginning of a project, after which all work on that project comes to an abrupt, screeching halt. I also think these are the hardest things to implement for social reasons.

The parts about shaping and cycles are good, but I think the amount of attention the book gives them underemphasizes the importance of the betting table and circuit breaker.

IMO the strongest parts of Shape Up are a little bit differnt:

- Going back to Upfront Design / Upfront Thinking, aka Mini-Waterfall

- Giving back autonomy to developers, instead of micromanging / ticket shredding

- Fixed Time - Variable Scope

- Ditching high fidelity designs, embedding designers who can code HTML/CSS into the build teams.

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The problem with Shape Up 1.0 is it's a limited scope - it mostly applies to the Delivery track of small Product-led companies.

It doesn't cover reactive work like bug fixing, and the initial stages of the project (like for example in an early-stage startup).

The author is woprking on Shape Up 2.0, but it's still a moving target and not publicly available, beside some recorded talks / interviews.

For a full SDLC it will need to be combined with several other product frameworks, SDLCs, and task management methods/techniques.

I working on combining Shape Up with other relevant methodologies.

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