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ShapeUp from @basecamp leads with the line, "Instead of asking how much time it will take to do some work, we ask: How much time do we want to spend? How much is this idea worth?" which is very much the spirit of @mcfunley's datadriven.club
"Improving your discovery process should come after regaining your ability to ship." - very much the same findings from @nicolefv's "Accelerate"
The "Shaping" phase feels like the most novel contribution, fundamentally an argument for a design led product development process. Given the novelty, it also feels like the least introspected part of the process. Easy to see how it would work in the context of 37Signals.
"Fixed time, variable scope" is a good articulation of one of the core ideas that drove "Just Ship" at Etsy, namely time needs to be a constrained resource to make good technical decisions.
"Our default response to any idea that comes up should be: Interesting. Maybe some day." - at Etsy we tried for, "I have this crazy idea, talk me out of it", which is the grass roots version of the same impulse.
"When it comes to unclear ideas, the worst offenders are 'redesigns' or 'refactorings' that aren’t driven by a single problem or use case." - deep in the software engineering mindset is something that thrills at kill-two-bird-with-one-stone solutions, but they fail.
"Stating the appetite and embracing it as a constraint turns everyone in a partner in that process." -- assuming you've embedded this somewhat counterintuitive norm deep into your culture, ideally through years of repetition, and starting as early as during your hiring funnel.
"Two week [sprints aren't] worth the collective hours around the table to 'sprint plan'" - or you might find, as I do, that once you're working with focus and clarity on a well understood problem, one week sprints are also totally doable, but planning is so light.
That said I think the "Shape Up" point about "Cool down" or what I've usually call "slack", the unstructured time between bets is the most important and impactful practices I see no one adopting.
"Cool down" is the compromise for hard, focused work, and is a much healthier alternative to the usual practice of "we'll sandbag our estimates by 20% so we have time to work on technical debt".
"It’s not really a bet if we say we’re dedicating six weeks but then allow a team to get pulled away to work on something else." -- focus is a super power.
Love the thinking on "Work is like a hill", so much of our process is a doomed to failure attempt is to use tasks to represent momentum, progress, and certainty. Tasks are tasks. You need something else to communicate how the project is going. basecamp.com/shapeup/3.4-ch…
My go to process to solve the same problem iss to ask teams for a weekly reflection on their confidence level in achieving their goal for this cycle, but I like these refinements.
