Shape Up

Foreword by Jason Fried

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Introduction

• Growing pains
• Six-week cycles
• Shaping the work
• Making teams responsible
• Targeting risk
• How this book is organized

Chapter 2

Principles of Shaping

• Wireframes are too concrete
• Words are too abstract
• Case study: The Dot Grid Calendar
• Property 1: It's rough
• Property 2: It's solved
• Property 3: It's bounded
• Who shapes
• Two tracks
• Steps to shaping

Chapter 3

Set Boundaries

• Setting the appetite
• Fixed time, variable scope
• "Good" is relative
• Responding to raw ideas
• Narrow down the problem
• Case study: Defining "calendar"
• Watch out for grab-bags
• Boundaries in place

Chapter 4

Find the Elements

• Move at the right speed
• Breadboarding
• Fat marker sketches
• Elements are the output
• Room for designers
• Not deliverable yet
• No conveyor belt

Chapter 5

Risks and Rabbit Holes

• Different categories of risk
• Looking for rabbit holes
• Case study: Patching a hole
• Fencing off use cases
• Cutting back
• Inviting an expert
• De-risked and ready to write up

Chapter 6

Write the Pitch

• Ingredient 1. Problem
• Ingredient 2. Appetite
• Ingredient 3. Solution
• Help them see it
• Embedded sketches
• Drafted breadboards
• Cleaned up fat marker sketches
• Ingredient 4. Rabbit Holes
• Ingredient 5. No Gos
• Examples
• Ready to present
• How we do it in Basecamp

Chapter 7

Bets, Not Backlogs

• No backlogs
• A few potential bets
• Decentralized lists
• Important ideas come back

Chapter 8

Bet Six Weeks

• Six-week cycles
• Cool-down
• Team and project size
• The betting table
• Set expectations
• Uninterrupted time
• The circuit breaker
• Keep the slate clean
• Questions to ask
• Does the problem matter?
• Is the appetite right?
• Is the solution attractive?
• Are the right people available?
• Make the announcement

Chapter 9

Hand Over Responsibility

• Assign projects, not tasks
• Done means deployed
• Getting oriented
• Imagined vs discovered tasks

Chapter 10

Get One Piece Done

• Integrating in one place
• Case study: Clients in projects
• Programmers don't need to wait
• Affordances before pixel-perfect screens
• Program just enough for the next step
• Pick where to start

Chapter 11

Map the Scopes

• Organize by structure, not by person
• The scope map
• The language of the project
• Case study: Message drafts
• Discovering scopes
• How to know if the scopes are right
• Layer cakes
• Icebergs
• Chowder
• Mark nice-to-haves with ~

Chapter 12

Show Progress

• The tasks that aren't there
• Estimates don't show uncertainty
• Work is like a hill
• Scopes on the hill
• Status without asking
• Nobody says "I don't know"
• Prompts to refactor the scopes
• Build your way uphill
• Solve in the right sequence

Chapter 13

Decide When to Stop

• Compare to baseline
• Limits motivate trade-offs
• Scope grows like grass
• Cutting scope isn't lowering quality
• Scope hammering
• When to extend a project

Chapter 14

Move On

• Let the storm pass
• Stay debt-free
• Feedback needs to be shaped

Conclusion

• Get in touch

How to Implement Shape Up in Basecamp

• A Basecamp Team for shaping
• Basecamp Projects for cycle projects
• To-Do Lists for scopes
• Track scopes on the Hill Chart

How to Begin to Shape Up

• One six-week experiment
• Shaping first
• Cycles first
• Build your muscle
• Focus on the macro

Summary of the Method

• Six week cycles, two tracks
• Phases of the work
• Steps to perform

Detail of the In-Cycle Steps

• What teams do in a cycle
• Looping through the steps
• A designer's path
• A designer and programmer
• The lifespan of scopes
• Updating the hill chart

Example of a Complex Project

• Real scopes moving uphill
• A month later

Glossary

About the Author