Ryan Singer, founder @Felt Presence and author of “Shape Up”, tells us how and why the Shape Up methodology took shape within the Basecamp company. Throughout this talk, he explains the advantages of this method to quickly developed meaningful products. He highlights the importance of identifying on the early stage of our project the blocks and issues that may surface during the cycles, by involving the 3 roles of product : Product, Design and Engineering.
The main key learnings:
- Use time as a design constraint. Setting a time limit will force you to identify what are the different solutions that can fit in that time. You reverse your approach from an estimate of the time you need to realize your project, to an appetite, which means what you can actually do in a limited amount of time.
- Do deep-diging at the very beginning of the process. By involving the three key roles : Product, Design and Engineering, you will be able to find out what could be produced or not. It will help you avoid issues later and allow the team to work autonomously. You will gain more time to think of more important subjects.
- Adapt the shaping up methodology to your company. Not all companies are boostrapped and the shaping up methodology is not fit for all, but you can still pick up some best practices to leverage your product management.
To learn more about Product Management: our book Agile Product Management