A new edition of Shape Up is on the way!
The book debuted in 2019 and has had a tremendous impact on thousands of teams who have found a better way to build products—I was actually part of one of them. Before I joined 37signals, I led product at a startup and the book came along at the perfect time.
Two things planted the seed for a second edition. The first was building a series of new products — HEY Calendar, Campfire, Writebook, and two more that will be released this year. That looks very different from typical cycle projects and has evolved from what’s described in the first edition. The core pieces of Shape Up are there, but they take different form. It’s more intuitive and there’s less ceremony.
The second edition goes deep into new product development with Shape Up. That way of working, though, is also how experienced, high-performing Shape Up teams work on existing projects. We have a lot to share about what that looks like that’s helpful at any stage.
The second seed was the many questions we receive from people just getting started with Shape Up. They're curious about how to juggle reactive work with feature development, how to fit QA within a short appetite, whether Shape Up and R&D are compatible, if it makes sense for teams beyond product to adopt it, and more.
We also hear from those who have finished a handful of cycles, but are running into friction—projects exceeding their appetite, pitches that read like product specs, work that ships but isn’t fully formed, uncertainty about what to shape, and struggling to make time to do it.
The new edition includes a section on shipping, plus expanded chapters on choosing what to shape, writing pitches, betting, and keeping projects moving forward. There’s more about getting started, what to do when something isn’t working, and how to make it your own.
The writing and polishing continue, so I’m sure much will change before it’s released. Please reach out if there were things that you struggled with when you first started with Shape Up or topics you wished the book covered in more detail. And if you’re part of a high-performing team yourself, let me know what that looks like and how you got there. Drop me a note at brian@37signals.com. A huge thanks to everyone who's shared feedback and questions over the years!
Shape Up is a fresh, living framework and we can’t wait to share what we've learned over the last six years. The second edition will be published this year, free online. In the meantime, you can read the first edition here.
The book debuted in 2019 and has had a tremendous impact on thousands of teams who have found a better way to build products—I was actually part of one of them. Before I joined 37signals, I led product at a startup and the book came along at the perfect time.
Two things planted the seed for a second edition. The first was building a series of new products — HEY Calendar, Campfire, Writebook, and two more that will be released this year. That looks very different from typical cycle projects and has evolved from what’s described in the first edition. The core pieces of Shape Up are there, but they take different form. It’s more intuitive and there’s less ceremony.
The second edition goes deep into new product development with Shape Up. That way of working, though, is also how experienced, high-performing Shape Up teams work on existing projects. We have a lot to share about what that looks like that’s helpful at any stage.
The second seed was the many questions we receive from people just getting started with Shape Up. They're curious about how to juggle reactive work with feature development, how to fit QA within a short appetite, whether Shape Up and R&D are compatible, if it makes sense for teams beyond product to adopt it, and more.
We also hear from those who have finished a handful of cycles, but are running into friction—projects exceeding their appetite, pitches that read like product specs, work that ships but isn’t fully formed, uncertainty about what to shape, and struggling to make time to do it.
The new edition includes a section on shipping, plus expanded chapters on choosing what to shape, writing pitches, betting, and keeping projects moving forward. There’s more about getting started, what to do when something isn’t working, and how to make it your own.
The writing and polishing continue, so I’m sure much will change before it’s released. Please reach out if there were things that you struggled with when you first started with Shape Up or topics you wished the book covered in more detail. And if you’re part of a high-performing team yourself, let me know what that looks like and how you got there. Drop me a note at brian@37signals.com. A huge thanks to everyone who's shared feedback and questions over the years!
Shape Up is a fresh, living framework and we can’t wait to share what we've learned over the last six years. The second edition will be published this year, free online. In the meantime, you can read the first edition here.