Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters by Ryan Singer & Jason Fried
Review
I really enjoyed this. It’s short, well structured and clearly written. But the main thing is that it really made me think about my current and past teams have approached things.
It would be easy to read this and come to the conclusion that none of the ideas are particularly groundbreaking on their own (except maybe the “ship in 6 weeks or bin it” rule). However, I felt it helped me look at some ideas and techniques in a new light. I particularly liked the focus on “appetite” for making changes, the hill charts, and the “hammering” of scope. Also, I felt the ideas added up to a coherent and cohesive whole.
The descriptions of how processes with at Basecamp are all pretty idealised and I’m sure that a few rough edges have been smoothed off. That’s kind of unavoidable with this sort of book though, so I can’t hold that against it.