Find out what Shape Up is about. Read the book. See how it's evolved in recent talks, podcasts, and articles.
The new Shaping in Real Life course helps you debug your current process and see new ways forward. Get the "a-ha" you're missing and learn real-world techniques to start applying pieces of Shape Up in your team.
If you think that I can help, but you're not sure exactly how, we can have a call to talk through what's going on and sketch out some possibilities.
I've worked on all levels of the software stack, from UI design to programming to strategy. Over 17 years at 37signals, I designed features used by millions and eventually became Head of Strategy. In 2019 I wrote Shape Up, and three years later founded Felt Presence to help product teams stop running in circles and regain the thrill of building.
Shaping isn't writing. It's not filling out a template or creating a document. It's getting to that "a-ha" moment together where the parts crystalize and we have something that will work. (Plus an example of how messy a real shaping session looks.)
Questions about roadmaps, betting at the last minute, iterations, and how shipping what we intended is like driving a car.
The recent wave of layoffs reveals something tricky about the notion of "empowered" product teams. There's a missing ingredient that seems to separate the teams who get cut from the teams who survive.