Shape Up - At Your Startup: A Guide to Adapting Key Ideas for Faster Delivery

Hey there!

I know you're busy building your startup, so I wanted to provide a handy guide on how to take some of the core Shape Up concepts and tweak them to move even faster.

The key is taking the principles that work and adapting them to best suit your team.

6 Week Cycles

The standard Shape Up cycle is six weeks. But for a startup, that may feel too long in between checking in and making adjustments. Consider trying shorter week cycles instead. We actually use 8-week cycles, with 2-week cool downs in-between.

This allows you to build, test, hack, and learn much faster.

Just make sure to avoid the trap of excessive planning and estimation in a short timeframe.

Less Formal Shaping

The shaping process is important for setting priorities and framing problems. But for a small startup team, you likely talk to each other constantly already.

So, you may only need a lightweight shaping process. Gather the team, review the big picture goals, have a group discussion on what to tackle next, and capture the conclusions.

I currently write short product briefs or mock-ups of a few screens to convey the idea. Depending on the novelty of the work, it’s either a simple tldraw wireframe (low novelty) or a Figma mockup (high novelty).

No need for lots of documentation.

Flexible Bet Sizing

When making bets, don't feel locked into the standard small, medium, or large framework. In a scrappy startup environment, you need to stay nimble.

Feel free to size bets based on your business needs and resources week to week. Some bets may even last only one cycle to validate an idea.

The point is to select the right size for each bet to align with your pace of learning.

Focused Communication

The weekly check-in meetings are helpful even at a fast-moving startup. But keep them focused on reviewing progress and hearing about any blockers. Avoid slipping back into status updates.

The conversation should center around the current and upcoming bets, not daily activity. Stay high-level.

The key in a startup world is staying flexible. Shape Up provides excellent principles, but don't be afraid to adapt them as needed to enable your team to learn and deliver value as fast as possible.

Principled Thinking

Here are some actionable principles for adapting Shape Up for your startup:

• Start with small, low-risk bets to validate ideas quickly. Shape Up recommends larger "bets" that can take weeks, but for a startup, you may want 1-2 day micro-bets to rapidly test assumptions.

  
  

• Focus on the riskiest parts of the problem first. Shape Up suggests tackling the overall shape of the problem upfront. For startups, identify the riskiest elements that need validation, and tackle those in your initial bets.

  
  

• Get a minimal version in users' hands fast. Shape Up prescribes a 6-8 week shaping process. For startups, you may only need 2-3 weeks of shaping before building a minimal prototype for user testing.

  
  

• Review metrics frequently. With Shape Up's longer cycles, metrics reviews happen less often. Startups should review key metrics at least every 1-2 weeks to check if they are moving the numbers that matter.

  
  

• Don't over-rotate on documentation. For fast-moving startups, keep documentation minimal and verbal communication high.

  
  

• Keep teams small and nimble. Shape Up recommends pods of 2-4 people. Startups may want teams of 1-2 people to promote accountability and speed.

  
  

• Maintain flexibility in the process. Shape Up provides a good foundation, but feel free to diverge from prescribed timelines, practices, etc., based on your startup's needs. Your velocity, impact, and quality of learning matters more than a process.

The core ideas of Shape Up can work for startups, but you have to adapt them to fit your pace. Keep bets small, get customer feedback fast, stay nimble, and don't be afraid to customize the practices to your startup's reality.