A better way to plan, build, and ship products | Ryan Singer (creator of “Shape Up,” early employee at 37signals)

I often use this analogy of like if you're doing a home renovation, you can have like the most beautiful rendering of the new bedroom and we're gonna have these lamps on the side of the bed that are coming out from the wall. But if you haven't checked if there's electricity in that wall there or not, it's gonna drastically change the cost and the time and everything. What we need to do in a in a shaping session is we come out with Some kind of diagram where engineers, product, and design they're saying we understand that. So the first thing is we are not going to start something unless we can see the end from the beginning. We're not going to Take a big concept and then say, what's the estimate for this thing? We're gonna go the other way around and we're gonna say, what is the maximum amount of time we're willing to go? Before we actually finish something, how do we come up with a idea that's going to work in the amount of time that the business is interested in spending? Today my guest is Ryan Singer. Ryan was one of the first few hires at 37 Signals.

and through his experience of building basecamp and his 17 years of building products at thirty seven signals. He wrote a book called Shape Up. Which shares a very different approach to building software. Appetites instead of deadlines. A big focus on bringing design engine product together into a room to shape the plan, versus writing long PRDs or trying to finalize designs before you start building.

I've noticed more and more teams adopt the shapeup method, and especially with AI starting to change how we work and build product, there's a shift coming in how product teams will operate. And so I thought this was the perfect time to do a deep dive into the shape up method. This episode is basically gonna give you everything you need to give ShapeUp a shot on your team or at your company to see if it fixes the problems that you're having shipping great products. A big thank you to Desk Trainer, Bob Mesta, and Chris Speck. For suggesting questions and topics for this conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.

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