Large epics always overlapped into additional sprints
little time to pause, review, and refine the process itself
Reflection every few weeks is key to growth.
Our decisions should solely be based on moving the product forward in the next six weeks, not micromanaging time.
Dual Tracks: Shaping & Building
asked to swarm a project together and give it their undivided attention to see it through to completion.
During any six-week cycle, teams are building work that’s been previously shaped,
Two tracks when in-cycle (6 weeks):
Building: Uninterrupted work on approved pitches
Shaping: Gathering requirements for the next cycle
Work on the shaping track is kept private and not shared with the wider organization until the commitment has been made to bet on it (see “betting”).
The main focus of shaping is to go really deep into understanding the problem
Understand the audience (users or stakeholders) and any insights (qualitative or quantitative) that help you understand the problem or the user more.
The Pitch’s ingredients include:
Problem Statement
Audience
Insights
Appetite
Solutions
Rabbit Holes
Out of Scope (no-gos)
Success
Trust the team to take on the entire project and work within the boundaries of the pitch (see setting boundaries/appetite). The team is going to define their own tasks and their own approach to the work.
They have to acquaint themselves with the relevant code, think through the pitch, bring up questions, and go down some short dead ends to find a starting point.
Backlogs are often big time wasters and anxiety builders.
Another concept that might help you let go of backlogs is that important ideas come back,
you host a betting table to decide what to build next cycle. This meeting should be extremely focused on reviewing what was previously shaped, and the deliverable of the meeting is a few pitches we decide to build next cycle — these are our “bets”. Anything not bet on, we let go of it for now, but they can be bet on again next cool down if you decide to.
Bets have a payout.
The pitch defines a specific payout that makes the bet worth making.
Bets are commitments. If we bet six weeks, then we commit to giving the team the entire six weeks to work exclusively on that thing with no interruptions.
smart bet has a cap on the downside.
We don’t allow ourselves to get into a situation where we’re spending multiples of the original estimate for something that isn’t worth that price.
