At Basecamp, we have a reputation for punching above our weight class.
It’s a reputation we quite enjoy. Because it celebrates the fact that we don’t rely on the size of our team (~80) or the amount of venture capital we’ve raised ($0) to go toe-to-toe with our competitors, most of which have thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in outside funding.
So, how does our project management software compete when we have just a fraction of the resources? Simple. We developed a fundamentally different way to build software…an approach we call Shape Up.
How We Shape Our Work
For two decades, our approach to software development was fine-tuned in isolation. We built a system that worked for us and the products we wanted to create. No backlogs. No scrum boards. No standups.
Eventually, people started asking how we worked. They noticed that our output was well beyond what they’d expect with our relatively small team, and wanted to learn more. We’d share bits and pieces of our Shape Up approach when we could, but were never able to paint the whole picture. That is, until we sat down a few years ago and outlined the entire system in a book: Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work That Matters.
There’s a lot to unpack and unlearn, but the basics of Shape Up are simple:
Six-Week Cycles
Work is done in six-week cycles. Six weeks is long enough to build something meaningful, but short enough to encourage our developers and designers to use their time wisely.
Shape the Work
We “shape the work” before it ever reaches a team. Senior leadership participate in a “Betting Table” where they decide what will be the focus of the coming cycle, who will work on which projects, and what the boundaries are for each.
Everything Has an Appetite
Work receives an “appetite”. Never do we ask, “How long will this take?” Instead, teams are given an appetite that specifies exactly how long we think this feature is worth. If something prevents the team from shipping that feature within the timeframe allowed by the appetite, we pull a “circuit breaker,” putting the project on hold until we regroup and reshape the feature, or in some cases, abandon it altogether.
Assign Projects, Not Tasks
Each project passed on to our teams is passed in its entirety. No micromanaging tasks or to-dos. Teams are given the freedom to explore and implement the idea whichever way they feel best satisfies the shaped pitch provided by leadership.
After learning the basics of Shape Up, some developers will inevitably scoff at the idea of six-week cycles and time-boxing through appetites. Even if it could work for iterations of existing software, they say, there’s no way it could possibly be used to create an entirely new product.
Well, we can say with certainty that it does. Because it’s how we build every single product we introduce here at Basecamp.
Shaping Our Own Products
First, let us be clear – there are a lot of products that cannot be built in just six weeks (though most companies could benefit from the practice of learning to ship something on a regular cadence). But the extended work of building a new product can absolutely follow the Shape Up methodology and its six-week cycles.
For our new products – such as our recently announced Basecamp 4, or HEY, our fresh take on email – we separate out the development process into two phases: “R&D mode” and “production mode”. The first six-week cycle focuses on exploring an extremely rough outline of potential features we’re trying to pull together for the product. We pair an experienced programmer and designer to work out the basics of the architecture and interface. At this stage, we’re just trying to verify some assumptions, and see if we can properly accommodate the functionality we’ll need.
Of course, our R&D phase is as unpredictable as anyone’s. It’s not uncommon for ideas to get spiked and reshaped as things are uncovered in the work, which is why we allocate an entire cycle to the initial exploration. There’s time to roam and explore. We’ll even use multiple cycles for R&D, though when we do, we’re strict about shaping the focus of each cycle to explore a specific set of ideas and functionality. Without some guidance and boundaries, you can end up on an R&D journey that’s endless.
Once the fundamentals of the new product are ready for some structure, we “pour concrete” – our term for setting the architecture so that it provides constraints for future work. After the architecture is set, we can begin the Shape Up process for the production phase, pitching, betting, and setting the appetite for features that’ll hang atop what was built in R&D mode.
New product development still follows all the same principles of Shape Up that guide iterations of existing products. Small teams. Six-week cycles. Clear appetite and clear boundaries. The entirety of the project may take a year or two from start to finish, but we eat the elephant one bite at a time.
Shaping Your Work Inside Basecamp
Of course, much of what we use Shape Up for is improving Basecamp, and most Basecamp improvements are intended to improve the way we implement Shape Up internally. It’s a cycle where we literally use Basecamp to build Basecamp.
And if your team is looking to give Shape Up a try, Basecamp is the perfect way to get started. Here’s how…
For anyone on your team that will be involved in shaping the actual work – new products and existing products alike – create a new Basecamp project (we titled ours “Product Strategy”). Now you have a dedicated space to start posting feature pitches, shape upcoming cycles, bounce new ideas off one another, and more. And since everything remains inside this Basecamp project – messages, documents, chats, to-dos, etc. – you maintain a clear archive of all the product work you’ve done, and all the work that’s to come. Everything you need, all in one place.
Once your product leadership has decided on the pitches that will be tackled in upcoming cycles, create dedicated Basecamp projects for each one. We generally title these projects with the cycle number (e.g. “Cycle 4: Autopay”), so that it’s easy to search for them inside Basecamp. Add the designer and programmer you’ve assigned to the project, and post a kick-off message that outlines the feature pitch, appetite, boundaries, and any other relevant information.
Now, you have your shaped pitches in one place, and a dedicated space for each cycle project in another. Everything stays clean and organized, so your teams can focus on the work, not the paperwork.
Manage Your Shape Up Process with Basecamp
Of course, the only real way to experience the benefits of Shape Up and using Basecamp for your software development projects is to try them out for yourself. Download a free copy of Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work That Matters, and get started with Basecamp for free today (no credit card; no commitment).
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