Shape Up for a Two Person Team

Summary

YEAR 1 ANNIVERSARY! Rob and JD totally forgot that they released their first episode one year ago, and didn't prepare anything special...

Rob has been reading Shape Up by Basecamp, and the two start discussing its content. Rob got hooked when he read that Basecamp doesn't keep a backlog. (And he now wonders how the Hey support team passes feature requests to the developers.) For JD, the concept of Fixed Time, Variable Scope resonated the most. Regarding backlogs, he thinks it is really helpful to reset every few weeks and ask what is most relevant now instead of blindly following a backlog that was created weeks or even months ago.

Rob is still not convinced that it is worth taking the time to shape ideas, instead of just going ahead and implementing them. JD on the other hand thinks the more planning upfront the better, as it allows to focus on execution later on. Rob is afraid that shaping is unproductive and takes time away from implementation and demotivates, while JD hopes they learn how to become efficient in planning and reducing risk upfront to then enjoy the coding more.

JD wrote a blog post covering the first feature the two are thinking about implementing, which can be found here https://jandavid.co/turtles-all-the-way-down-2 and here https://dev.to/jdno/turtles-all-the-way-down-10on.

Stay in touch

Website: https://www.devnlife.com
Jan David: https://twitter.com/0x6a64
Rob: https://twitter.com/RobPando