The end of Scrum arrive? Shape up came up

A new way to build software

Based on basecamp own internal product development approach (and disseminated by devs and CTO's at Sillycon Valley) Shape up is a new methodology to manage and build software. And no, it's not the end of Scrum and i will explain why.

How this works?

The process consist in a six week work cycle focusing on the delivery of a product(or huge feature) from start to finish. This weeks is distributed like this:

The phases is like this:

• Shape: Focusing on understunding the problem, identifying the scope and estimate the effort for the features.
• Bet: The team will choose some features and will create POCs (Proof of Concept) for the most complex of them to validate what they discussed and plan in the 'Shape' Phase.
• Build: After creating the scope in the 'Shape' phase and using the knowledge received in the 'Bet' phase, here the team will focus on develop the features until the end.
• Cooldown: The time when the team has a intentional rest period, reflecting about their deliveries, celebrating successfull goals and having a space for mental health.

Why use this methodology?

If you are tired of Scrum, you would think seriously about implementing this way to work in your company (if you can and your company its not a service provider) because you will feel more 'space' to plan the software and less rushing fixing bugs.

Other good reason is the six fucking weeks to plan your software. It's looks like too much, but when you are inside of this, you can think deeply in the feature and his consequences for other domains of the software and fix this BEFORE code. Looks good, right?

When?

If you work on product company. This is the when.

This is my opinion only, but i think this methodology doesen't work with software houses and other companies who provide services because when you dealing with a client (not a customer of your product) you need more contact points with him to check the work and its hard to negotiate deadlines and explain 'Sorry Mr. Client, we not ship your feature because the Team is on the cooldown phase'.

I'm not telling this is impossible, but you can agree about the how hard it is.

• Well planned and organized work
• Less incidence of bugs
• More autonomy for the teams
• Space for Mental Health and work review

• 'Slow' compared with other methodologies
• Don't fit with people who don't like processes
• Don't fit with services providers
• Good chance to create over engineering on the way

Conclusion I like this philosofy of work, focusing on a structured and organized work before code, but i know the limitations too. Observation: this is the Shape up as described by the basecamp team, but you can modify this to your own context. An good example:

• 1 week shaping
• 3 week build
• 1 week build(testing)
• 1 week cool down

If you want to learn more, see the Basecamp oficial description of Shape Up and how to implement it

Bye 👋