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#Bonus: In season 1 of this podcast, I've been speaking with a lot of teams who have adopted Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check below for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
Today I am joined by Klaus Breyer and Matt Lane for a very special bonus episode. Matt and Klaus met through the Shape Up forum when Matt posted about seeking collaborators around a Shape Up tooling idea he had.
Well, this infamous post has now turned the two into co-founders for Dumplink, a lightweight project/task management tool for teams that use Shape Up. But really, calling it "project management software" is not doing it justice, for it's really a communication, de-risking, and sense-making tool for the build teams on software projects.
Listen to Klaus and Matt nerd out about "directed acyclic graphs" and "foliation graphs" and catch an exclusive demo of Dumplink. Since you're listening to the audio version of this podcast, I recommend you check out the video version, too, to get the full picture. There's a link below that takes you directly to the screen-sharing part of our conversation.
Make sure to listen carefully to find out how you can test Dumplink for yourself, today!
Links:
Timestamp for the Dumplink demo video: https://youtu.be/8rvqxvQ1bKQ?si=IQKyNNpUYfSZorY-&t=1870
Matt's post in the Shape Up forum: https://discourse.learnshapeup.com/t/community-project-proposal-to-help-get-companies-started-with-shape-up/1069/1
Klaus' talk at the Shape Up Practitioners meetup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEnrFbR2qsoDumplink: https://dump.link/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
Today I am speaking with Marin Petrov who's part of Camplight, a collective of people working together on software projects and products. Within Camplight, Marin and his team is working on Assista, a trello powerup for better time tracking.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, Marin explains why Shape Up felt like such a natural fit for the team working on Assista, and how it gave them great language to activities like Shaping. It was fascinating for me to learn about Camplight's setup as a "collective", a way of working together that feels like an "indie hacker, but together" kind of approach.
Enjoy!
Links:
Marin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marinwaves
Camplight: https://camplight.net/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
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#9: Today I am speaking with Ilya Sterin, VP of Engineering at Medidata, a clinical trial technology company from the US with around 3,000 employees.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, Ilya explains his approach to introducing Shape Up at scale. We go deep on the core conceptual pillars within Shape Up, like "working iteratively", setting a big enough yet small enough batch size, and fixed time / variable scope. Instead of a dogmatic "book-in-hand" approach, Ilya chose to introduce Shape Up to his teams by reasoning from the principles of software engineering and avoiding putting a label on this "new way of working" as much as possible.
If you feel like Shape Up might help your team improve but are afraid of being turned down, Ilya's experience might just be what you need to get started. Enjoy!
Links:
Ilya's website: https://ilyasterin.com/
Ilya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyasterin/
Ilya on Twitter: https://twitter.com/isterin
Medidata: https://www.medidata.com/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
#8: Today I am speaking with Chris Boakes, Senior Software Engineer at Zoopla. Zoopla is a real estate company based in London, UK, which is best known for its property search website Zoopla.co.uk.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, we dive deep into how Chris pitched Shape Up to his team and got both his peers and engineering leadership to agree to trial a new way of working, in an organization that's largely running on Scrum. Chris had previously worked with Shape Up at a startup and when he joined Zoopla, an organization with hundreds of engineers, he immediately started spotting opportunities to improve the way his team worked.
If you're an individual contributor who's thinking of adopting Shape Up in your team, this episode is for you. Enjoy!
Links:
Chris' blog post on Shape Up at Zoopla: https://zoopla.blog/posts/2023/shape-up-at-zoopla/
Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-boakes/
Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cboakes
Zoopla: https://www.zoopla.co.uk/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
#7: Today I am speaking with David Šabata, who is CTO at ROI Hunter. ROI Hunter is providing SaaS tools for e-commerce companies. The company is mostly remote and has about 80 people, with 30 across product and engineering.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, we talk about David's growth from individual contributor to engineering leader, and his north start principle of "building a setup that he'd want to step back into as an individual contributor at any moment". David shares how he carefully managed his team's transition to Shape Up by piloting it with a small team and generating early wins, how being strict on each project's allotted time has gotten the team to become true experts in "fixed time / variable scope", and the huge leverage he gets from enabling project teams to focus completely on their work.
Enjoy!
Links:
ROI Hunter: https://www.roihunter.com/
David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsabata/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
#Bonus: Today I'm speaking with Mirela Mus, Founder and CPO at Product People. Her team of 41 in-house product managers helps companies cover parental leaves, scale teams up quickly during hyper-growth, and cover any other use case that calls for interim product managers.
This bonus episode breaks with the main theme of season 1 of the Shapers & Builders podcast, which is primarily about case studies of teams using Shape Up. Instead, today we get to enjoy the fact that Mirela and her team have worked within every product development context you can imagine, and learn from the incredible breadth of experience that Mirela has built up over the past 5 years with her team.
Besides Shape Up, which Mirela experienced during an engagement at TIER mobility, we talk about the general landscape of "software delivery", the intricacies of interim product management, how to evaluate seniority in any role, and what you can learn about product management from reading science-fiction books.
I had the best of times talking to Mirela, and am sure you'll enjoy our conversation!
Links:
Product People website: https://www.getproductpeople.com/
Mirela on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirelamus/
Thinking in Systems: https://www.goodreads.com/ro/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
Thinking in Bets: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35957157
Player of Games: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18630
Use of Weapons: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12007
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
Welcome to Shapers & Builders, the show about better ways to deliver great software products.
Today I am speaking with Stephan Bönnemann-Walenta of prosperity solutions. Stephan is managing director at prosperity solutions and responsible for product and engineering.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, we talk about how Stephan transitioned his engineers' role from pure "ticket execution" towards taking ownership for end-to-end solutions, the faulty assumptions he made along the way about "how all people like to work", as well as the benefit of having no more than two engineers per project.
We address many of the pitfalls that teams run into when trying to implement Shape Up, and how Stephan resolved them. So if you're thinking about giving Shape Up a try, this episode will be full of watch-outs and learnings.
Enjoy!
Links:
prosperity solutions: https://prosperitysolutions.li/
Stephan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boennemann/
Stephan's website: https://www.sbw.one
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders
Framing, Shaping, Shipping LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12846019/ -
#4: Today I am speaking with Juan Villarejo, CTO & Co-founder of Nulinga, an online language learning platform. Before founding Nulinga, Juan founded SinRutina, a subscription service for fitness classes, which was acquired by Gympass in 2018.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check below for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, Juan and I dive deep into how he's introduced Shape Up via a sequence of small steps and small wins, how to protect the team's focus, how to help people move from the "Builder" to the "Shaper" side, and the role of what Juan calls "Full Stack Designers" at Nulinga.
Juan has been a co-host of two meetups for the "Shape Up Practitioners Meetup" with me recently and he has generally been an incredibly active and helpful member of the Shape Up community. I'm very excited for you to hear what Juan had to say.
Links:
Nulinga: https://nulinga.com/
Juan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanivillarejo/
Juan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanivillarejo
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shape Up Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/shapeup-practitioners/
Shape Up Forum: https://discourse.learnshapeup.com/
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
#3: Today I am speaking with Bartwin van der Pols and Melissa Matthews of GoSee Travel, a global car rental and motorhome rental site. Bartwin joined GoSee as an Agile Lead about a year ago and piloted Shape Up together with Melissa, a product manager on one of the teams at GoSee.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check below for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, we talk about how Melissa's team got started with Shape Up, and the many pushbacks and doubts that Bartwin and Melissa had to navigate, even with the leadership level. Eventually, we'll learn how the team built momentum within a first cycle and was able to deliver a critical project months ahead of schedule. You'll hear us frequently come back to the topic of refinement, and how Shape Up pulled the team together and empowered, or maybe even forced them to collaborate more.
I'm excited to get to share these insights with you because the implementation of Shape Up at GoSee is the largest that I've witnessed to date. By the time of our recording, Bartwin had just kicked off the first cycle for a total of 20+ teams across GoSee travel.
Links:
Connect with Bartwin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/i-am-bartwin/
Connect with Melissa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissamatthewsnz/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Aylon Herbet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aylon-herbet-b4553315/
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
#2: Today I am speaking with Heiko Behrens, VP of product at Memfault, an IoT reliability platform. Before joining Memfault, Heiko has had an impressive career in engineering roles at Pebble smart watches, working on augmented reality devices at Intel, and most recently on the Oculus VR headset at Facebook / Meta.
This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
In our conversation, Heiko walks us closely through the product development process at Memfault, and how they've adopted and adapted Shape Up to their liking. What struck me the most was how rigorously Heiko and his colleagues have designed their process, incl. detailed playbooks for the "hats" that different people wear at different times. It feels like Heiko and the team are tackling this process design very much like an engineering problem, even keeping a changelog of how the process evolves with each cycle.
We get to talk about various tools that the team has developed to, for example, keep track of scopes of work, plan who's available, and manage well-formulated project briefings. Heiko also underscores that it's important to embrace the iteration in how you work, and that there's no "end state of enlightenment" that you're trying to reach.
I hope you enjoy our conversation!
Links:
Contact Heiko: https://heikobehrens.com/
Memfault: https://memfault.com/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders -
#1: Today I am speaking with Ryan Singer, former Head of Strategy at Basecamp. Ryan went through nearly every role in the product development stack during his 17-year tenure with the company: from UI design to programming to product management and, most recently, product strategy. In 2019, Ryan formalized the way that Basecamp was working into a framework that other companies could use, resulting in the release of the book "Shape Up – Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".
Since then, a lot has happened and many teams have adopted and adapted Shape Up. Ryan, in turn, has taken the learnings from those teams to reshape the framework and decouple it more and more from the specific context of Basecamp – a bootstrapped and stable business with a high share of senior people.
In our conversation, we explore some of the initial reactions to Shape Up, including common criticism of the framework. We then go deeper into the evolution of Shape Up 1.0 into the 2.0 version, which Ryan is now teaching in his course "Shaping in Real Life". You'll probably get the most out of this interview if you're already somewhat familiar with the Shape Up framework. If you want to catch up on context first, check below for some links to get started.
I'm particularly excited to have Ryan on today, because this episode actually kicks off the first season of the Shapers & Builders podcast, where I'll be speaking with teams of all sizes and stages to hear their stories of adopting Shape Up, how and why they've introduced it to their companies, and the tweaks they've made along the way. If you're curious to hear some real-life case studies of teams working with Shape Up, make sure to subscribe and check out the other episodes of the show.
Links:
Ryan's website: feltpresence.com
Ryan on Twitter / LinkedIn: https://twitter.com/rjs | https://www.linkedin.com/in/feltpresence/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shape Up book: https://basecamp.com/shapeup
Shaping In Real Life course: https://feltpresence.com/srl/
Kent Beck (The Engineering Room Ep. 16): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guycIP56YeY
Ryan & David in 2020 on the Project A podcast: https://insights.project-a.com/from-scrum-to-shape-up-a-tale-of-catharsis/
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders
