Shape up and ship faster in just 6 weeks

Building software can be a place of chaos and confusion. Imagine you have been tasked with leading multiple teams, managing various content systems, and juggling multiple channels - all while trying to achieve business goals and foster collaboration. That is a lot of responsibility and pressure for leadership and management to make the right decisions.

While agile development is supposed to help manage these problems, it often starts to lose its value once problems aren't well-defined. Tasks are created with minimal information. A common theme I see is when I open up my project management software and tasks are described in 2 sentences.

First of all that is a red flag for poor management, and second, by doing this, you are wasting a ton of money. I've run into this problem so many times in my career I often ask myself "How the fuck do I fix this?"

After spending the last 10 years within product teams and understanding many companies' pain points I finally found a solution to this problem.

That's where Shape Up comes in. This method teaches teams how to define their work, take risks, and ship products within a set timeframe. It focuses on problem-solving instead of blindly managing tasks, and it allows for a more efficient workflow.

The key concept of this system is to build within a set timeframe. While most agile development run on 2-week sprints. Shape Up operates on 6-week build cycles because it gives teams more time to create something meaningful and also forces teams to ship projects in 6 weeks.

Instead of managing a long list of tasks in your backlog, a small senior group explores and defines a project before handing it off to a team to build, so that the project is concrete enough to provide direction but also abstract enough to give the team room to build.

This is important because teams have more autonomy to do their best work, freeing up managers to focus on shaping better projects. Once a manager hands over all details you have all the information you need to build an amazing project in 6 weeks.

You might be wondering how leadership chooses which projects to work on and then “betting”. Betting is the process of choosing a project for a six-week cycle, and involves team members proposing projects and seeing if leadership will back them. Anyone can place a bet but they need to be in a certain format for them to get approved.

This kind of structure makes it easy to evaluate which bets will be the most valuable for the company. I found this process very interesting as it gives teams a voice and allows them to take ownership of their projects.

The betting process is an essential part of the Shape Up method and is how teams decide which projects to work on within the 6-week build cycle. Betting involves team members proposing projects and seeing if leadership will back them. These bets need to be structured in a certain way, which includes a clear goal, timeline, and resources needed. This structure makes it easy to evaluate which bets will be the most valuable for the company.

Once the bets are made, the team and leadership need to come together to decide which project to pursue and how to allocate resources. This allows teams to take ownership of their projects and gives them a voice in their product development.

By implementing the betting process, teams are able to prioritize the most important projects and make sure they are working on the right things within the time frame. This process creates a more efficient workflow and ensures teams have enough time to create something meaningful.

Overall, the Shape Up method is something that I highly recommend for product development teams that want to increase their chances of shipping quality products on time. It's an effective way to manage problems and goals, communicate effectively, and build great products.

So if you're tired of the chaos and frustrated with constantly failing to ship products, give Shape Up a try. It just might be the solution your team has been looking for.