Shape Up, Who does the Shaping?

It is one of the articles in the Shape Up series. For Table of Contents go to: Shape Up, Introduction

Who does the Shaping?

The most common question for the Shaping phase is who does the Shaping. Basecamp answers this question in Who Shapes chapter of the book.

The conclusion that we may see is to involve someone aware of the design, business, and technicals. It usually leads to building a team who can collaborate to create the following pitches. There should also be someone empowered to set the concrete level of investment (Appetite).

From my perspective, the composition of the Shapers may differ. Here’s how.

Board / Founder / Leader does the Shaping

In early-stage companies, usually, there is a Product Leader / Chief Product Officer who will be strongly involved in the Shaping process. In many organizations, this person will be the only one to have the authority to make the calls on the following features to implement.

The good thing about that is that it lowers the need to involve the whole team in the discovery process and doesn’t create the need to educate everyone with the domain knowledge. Ouch, stop! Writers of the most modern books would blame me for that, but yes… I think this approach is ok in many cases.

However, there are two main drawbacks of going this way.

The first one is that once the organization gets bigger, the CPO becomes a bottleneck for everyone else.

The second one is that it produces a team of people focused on just the delivery. To read more on this topic, go to Missionaries vs Mercaneries by Marty Cagan.

Product Trio does the Shaping

Once your company evolves, you may take another approach, which doesn’t narrow the Shaping process to just a single person. There is an idea of the Product Trio in Continuous Discovery Habits book by Teresa Torres. It is similar to Three Amigos popularized in Scrum. Both views are about bringing different perspectives together and letting them collaborate.

Product Trio is made of a Product Manager, Engineer and Designer. These people might be a “Head/Chief Level”, but do not have to. This is very effective composition for shaping the future of the product.

The critical aspect you need to take care of in this approach is encouraging these people to collaborate. It is NOT about permitting them to Shaping in separation from each other.

Everyone does the Shaping

The third approach is to let everyone write Shapes/Pitches. This step raises involvement on all levels within the organization. It may surprise you with many valuable ideas that you will get from people.

To make them successful, it is mandatory providing everyone with a Product Vision and Strategy. Without sharing the strategic context with them, the likelyhood of shaping something irrelevant to your strategic goals is relatively high. People will get demotivated and stop participating in discovery activities if you reject many of their ideas during the Betting Table while choosing your own ones.

Once you share the context and strategy with them, you need to ensure they have the time for it. Most likely, Builders will not have the time to write the Pitches during the Building Phase. Of course, they may try to do that during the Cooldown phases.

Also, many people will have great ideas, but they’ll not be willing to write that down just because they might not be the best writers. In such a case, you can share a simple Google Form with everyone asking them to describe their idea in 2 sentences and recommend the Appetite. Then you may review the survey, get in touch with them and help write the final Shape/Pitch.

Mix all above

Once you know three different approaches, you may mix them together.

Allowing everyone at the company to work on the Shapes while you’re still letting CPO or Product Trio do it is a good move. It enables leaders to execute the strategy, and also it gives all employees the possibility to participate in the future of the product.

Then you can bet on the Pitches from these various sources.

Just think about how to make this mixture work.

Ask for feedback on the Pitch, early

There is a single risk worth mentioning for the Shaping.

Many people tend to keep their hard work hidden as long as something becomes “demoable”.

During the Shaping process, it is worth publishing drafts and sharing the Pitches in the early stages (before the Betting) so that other people can provide some feedback.

Even if just one person is working on a Shapes, opening them for feedback from everyone leads to positive results.

Who does the Building?

Obviously, the ones who can code and design — however, at least one more person must be involved.

Include the owner of the Pitch into Building

Builders will need direct and constant access to the person who prepared the Pitch or any other person who understands the why? behind the Pitch.

Soon, we will focus more on the project roles and responsibilities.

For now, keep in mind that Shape Up is not meant to be a waterfall process. People who wrote the Pitch need to be involved during the Building phase to support Builders with knowledge and feedback.

The following article will discuss how concrete the Pitches should be.