When building our team, we were very conscious about this problem, so we addressed it right away.īefore an employee joined us, while they were still going through our interview process, they heard us talk at length about delivering user value. This happens when there is a gap in leadership. This happens because people don’t have a purpose to get behind, so they conjure one up for themselves. This behavior kills motivation, stifles innovation, and ultimately destroys a lot of business value. Have you ever been in a workplace where individuals or entire teams bring in a new piece of tech for no reason other than to pad CVs with buzzwords? I want to share with you the thought process that led us to the same conclusions as Basecamp, in the hope that it will help you adopt Shape Up successfully. We also found that estimate-driven project management, as opposed to appetite-driven, caused a lot of friction. Having to repeat planning and ceremonies every two weeks was too expensive for us. Shape Up resembled the method we had developed independently at our workplace.įor example, we felt that the traditional two-week sprints got in the way too much. It was like our team’s philosophy had been put down in writing by a thorough and eloquent writer. When I first read the Shape Up e-book I couldn’t help but notice how familiar it was. If you want successful Shape Up application, you need to know this part. In this post, I want to explore “the why” that makes “the how” really click. While these “Shape Up vs Scrum” articles are useful, they tend to only cover the mechanical differences between Basecamp's Shape Up and Scrum. As the Shape Up method gains popularity, I see more and more blog posts written by teams who made the transition from other methodologies to Shape Up.

Shape up basecamp