Shaping up: how we reinvented waterfall using agile principles and it (nearly) works great(ish)!

Shape Up is a methodology Basecamp developed to keep a tight focus on delivery. At Savanta we had trouble with focus, and problems delivering. Shape Up sounded like a great match. But was it merely waterfall in a trendy outfit? Or just a fancy way of saying “six-week sprints”? Would it be better or worse? Yes.

I’ll talk you through how we tried Shape Up, the problems it solved, the problems it created, how we iterated on it, and what we learned.

Participant takeaways:

• An understanding of the Shape Up methodology and when it might be worth trying
• How the structure of a development process can become a tool for stakeholder engagement and prioritisation 
• A view on the difficulty of balancing whether we optimise for the development teams vs managers and business leaders
• How Shape Up has (at Savanta at least) more or less made itself redundant by educating the organisation out of the mindset that made it necessary

Themes: Development methodologies, Project management, Organisational change, Stakeholder engagement, Project vs product thinking, Prioritisation, Culture