We’ve just wrapped up our second cycle of Shape Up. This cycle we moved from teams of three developers to teams of two. This change resulted in more parallel projects, naturally reducing the time that a PM could spend with engineers. Knowing this, and wanting to stay true to the goal of ‘Handing over Responsibility’ we added a new section to all of our pitches. This section we called ‘One Key Thing’.
The goal of the ‘One Key Thing’ was to provide a single sentence to guide the project. During our cycle 1 retros we found that teams regularly found themselves with more discovered tasks than they could reasonably complete. Furthermore, during implementation there were, as always, choices to be made on how to build. The teams enjoyed the freedom to make the choices but often felt unsure what best aligned with the project as a whole.
Introducing the ‘One Key Thing’ statement helped make those decisions easier. Each was refined and tested to try and remove as much ambiguity as possible. Our goal was to provide teams with a statement that both encapsulated the project and made it clear what we cared about most. Let’s take a look at some specific examples.
One of our projects this cycle was an update to parts of our transport management tools. Without labouring on the internals of logistics, these tools help manage the movement of cargo on tracks to or from the port. We’ve started to work with higher volume and more complex customer supply chains and our previous system needed an upgrade. Because this part of our platform involved both customers and transport operators we had to make sure the team knew where to focus.
For this particular project our One Key Thing was:
“Give Transport the ability to use My Deliveries as their main interface for doing work.”
Within this one statement were a few carefully chosen words.
Firstly, ‘Transport’, this was a project that was first and foremost about optimising the workflows of Transport Operators. When tasks were ranked, those that changed customer workflows were lower priority by default. That’s not to say customer workflows got no attention. We had numerous changes to the customer view but they were chosen when they provided benefit to Transport Operators.
Secondly, ‘My Deliveries’, we very intentionally wanted to give Transport Operators a high level tool to manage deliveries in bulk. Our previous workflow had been focused shipment by shipment. As a result, Transport operators spent a lot of time switching between the detail view of individual shipments to complete their work. We wanted to make it clear that while this would remain an option, we wouldn’t be looking to change that flow in this project.
Lastly ‘For doing work’, this one seems small but was also very intentional. We wanted to make sure that whatever new features we developed became the main tools for managing deliveries. We weren’t looking for more reporting tools or dashboards. Every action we could make accessible from this page, rather than within a single shipment, was a win.
Feedback from the team has been positive. Overall the ‘One Key Thing’ provided them with guidance on what to build without being overly prescriptive. For our next cycle we’re looking to add some additional detail on the ‘perfect’ user flow, but that’s a post for another time.
Cementing six weeks of work into a single sentence is not an easy task. Each of ours had several iterations between their first draft and the final version accepted at the betting table. Overall however, adding them it and referring to them regularly has helped our team move faster while maintaining the freedom that comes with Shape Up.
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