Shape up: our setup and 1st cycle insights

PM findings #7: We have switched from Scrum to Shape up, sharing our path of adoption

We have finalized our 1st cycle with Shape up methodology. At Priotix we have switched from Scrum to Shape up for one of our startup e-sport products.

I had already posted a story talking about the Shape up, why we have decided to make the switch, you can read it here: Why Shape up.

Process setup we started with:

1. We started with 4 weeks of building phase and 1 week of cool down. So we have cycles every 5 weeks.
2. We still use JIRA for the building phase. During this cycle, decided that we will create an Epic for the Pitch, then define smaller parts/scopes as user stories and subtasks are just to-do list for each sub-scope.
3. We work with Shapers team, it is not just a Product owner but a blended team working on pitches.
4. For writing and maintaining pitches we use Slite.
5. We keep daily standup meetings, retrospectives and demos in the cycle.
6. In Basecamp, for every pitch they have a defined team structure, for us, it’s not the case, so we dynamically form teams for each pitch.
7. Regarding small things that come during the cycle from the Shapers team or extended stakeholders, we decided to treat them as Cooldown candidates. The team can decide if they pick something from there, if no, then they will be grouped to be pitched.
8. We have created a Slack channel where everyone can share their ideas about the product.
9. We are defining quarterly OKRs in the company. Previously we were having Product and Technical team OKRs separately. With this new setup, we realized that it doesn’t really make much sense to list tech team OKRs separately, instead, we defined product goals and tech team being part of the product team, whatever is doing should be towards achieving that goal. These goals are also considered when deciding on pitches to be shaped and later built.
10. We decided to keep tech planning meeting, but modify it to involve QA and Designer as well and discuss overall implementation strategy with all domains involved.

How it went

We all really felt the change of teamwork in this cycle. It was not ideal for sure, since this was the very 1st cycle and many prior habits were also there, but definitely, this new approach made team realize the need of being dynamic, collaborative and very well informed about each other’s work. During the cycle, things were really improved.

One of the challenges we faced, was managing the scope delivery the way that it has the proper time of going through the whole cycle, especially for QA review. We eventually succeeded in the release, but we had some overtime work, which is also another issue that we should address next cycle.

Screenshot from our retrospective meeting

Cycle manifesto

We conducted a retrospective meeting and team ideated about How might we manage our cycles more efficiently and in reality those points can be considered as a manifesto for teams who work with Shape up/ Cycles.

1. Understand each other’s work better
2. Be flexible on solutions and processes, plan dynamically
3. Prioritize, left out things that are less important and time is pressing
4. Conduct initial strategic planning with all team members involved (where to start, how to deliver the scope that needed steps are done, etc)
5. Divide scope into smaller parts
6. Develop decision-making and full responsibility mindset for everyone in the team (developers, QA, Designer, and others).
7. Document discussion results, update them if changed and also keep an individual to-do list in JIRA (in our case).
8. Communicate more efficiently.
9. Ongoing improvement of team’s knowledge
10. Don’t get stuck on problems, share with the team, try to hack to find an easy way out.