Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles

Shape Up is Basecamp's radical alternative to Scrum and sprint-based development. After years of building successful products, they developed a method that eliminates the hamster wheel of sprints while maintaining momentum.

Core concepts include six-week cycles (long enough to build something meaningful, short enough to feel deadline pressure), appetite instead of estimates (how much time is this worth?), shaping before building (senior people work out the approach before involving the team), and betting table (leadership decides what to bet six weeks on).

The shaping process involves defining the problem and appetite, sketching a solution approach, identifying rabbit holes and risks, and writing a pitch that sells the idea. Shaped work has the right level of abstraction - concrete enough to know what to do, abstract enough for teams to own the solution.

Teams get full responsibility - no daily standups, no tickets assigned, no micromanagement. They own the entire cycle from tasks to deployment. The "circuit breaker" principle means projects end after six weeks regardless of completion - no extensions.

This approach eliminates estimation theater, reduces management overhead, increases team ownership, and creates natural project boundaries that prevent scope creep.