Shape Up — Collaborative Shaping
Appetite is different from an estimate. Estimates start with a design and ask how long. Appetites start with a time and ask what fits.
Shape Up Collaborative Shaping is the upstream phase of Ryan Singer's Shape Up methodology, where raw product ideas are transformed into well-defined Pitches before any team commits to building. Shapers fix a time budget (the 'appetite'), sketch solutions at low fidelity using breadboards and fat marker sketches, and explicitly call out rabbit holes — all before the work reaches the betting table. The result is shaped work with the right scope, the right risks named, and enough structure for teams to evaluate and build without mid-cycle surprises.
“We've been thinking about a project status dashboard. Managers keep asking project leads for updates and it's interrupting everyone.”
Set the appetite, sketch the breadboard, name the rabbit holes — then bet.
Shape Up treats shaping as a separate, disciplined phase from building — work is defined upstream before any team commitment is made. The process follows a fixed sequence: set the Appetite (a 2-week small batch or 6-week big batch time budget) before touching the solution; then define the problem in situation-specific terms rather than abstract requirements; then sketch solutions at low fidelity using Fat Marker Sketches and Breadboards — text-based flow diagrams showing Places (screens/menus), Affordances (buttons/fields), and Connection arrows, without any visual design. Shapers then name the Rabbit Holes (risky technical unknowns that could derail the cycle) and compile everything into a structured Pitch document comprising Problem, Appetite, Solution, Rabbit Holes, and No-gos. The Pitch goes to the Betting Table, where shaped work competes for a cycle slot on its merits.
Product teams waste cycles on work that was never fully shaped — handed off as vague tickets or over-specified mockups, both of which force builders to make product decisions mid-cycle when it's most expensive. The default process (estimate first, spec second, build third) bakes in scope ambiguity and technical unknowns that surface only after the team is already committed. Shape Up's shaping phase solves this by establishing a dedicated upstream phase where solutions are defined at the right fidelity: rough enough to keep implementation options open, specific enough to prevent rabbit holes from swallowing the cycle.
Stop handing your team ambiguous problems or over-specified mockups. Walk away with a Pitch that names the appetite, shows the breadboard, calls out the rabbit holes, and gives the betting table everything it needs to make a confident cycle decision.
- A raw product idea or customer pain you're considering addressing
- A rough sense of how important the problem is relative to your team's time
- Any known constraints, prior solutions, or technical concerns
- The specific user type or persona experiencing the problem
- A complete five-section Shape Up Pitch (Problem, Appetite, Solution, Rabbit Holes, No-gos)
- At least one Breadboard diagram showing Places, Affordances, and Connection flows
- An explicit Rabbit Holes list with recommended resolutions or No-go calls
- A narrowed Problem statement grounded in a specific situation, not abstract requirements
Watch the methodology work.
Three specimens from a single real session: the same situation, unaided and calibrated, the full transcript, and the skill answering live in the channel where the work happens.
“A PM drops a Jira ticket: 'Add project status dashboard — managers want visibility.' No problem definition, no appetite. A week into the six-week cycle, the team is debating whether to build a custom reporting engine or integrate a third-party tool, the backend engineer discovers the data model doesn't track project health in any structured way, and what started as 'a dashboard' has tripled in scope. The cycle ends with a half-built feature, a frustrated team, and a PM wondering why it's always like this.”
“A 45-minute shaping session produces a Pitch with a clear 2-week appetite, a breadboard showing a Digest Email flow with Project Settings toggle, an explicit rabbit hole (data model gap — spike before betting), and a No-go fallback (manual digest if auto-generation isn't feasible). The betting table reviews it in ten minutes, assigns a backend engineer to spike the data question that week, and schedules the feature for the following cycle with full confidence in the scope.”
The same skill, where the work happens.
No new app to learn. The methodology runs over the WhatsApp Business API, so the answer lands as a reply in the thread you’re already in — same rigour, zero context-switch.
What it does, specifically.
Each capability is a distinct move drawn straight from the source methodology — not a generic assistant guessing.
Appetite Setting
Reframes your scope conversation around time as a strategic constraint rather than a byproduct of estimation. Instead of asking how long a design will take, you first decide how much the problem is worth to your business — then let that appetite define what the solution can be. This prevents runaway scope and forces honest prioritization before any design work begins.
Problem Definition Sharpening
Transforms vague feature requests into situation-specific problem statements by forcing a real-world framing: who is in the moment, what are they trying to do, and what makes the current approach painful or broken. Specific problems produce bounded solutions; abstract requirements produce endless scope debates.
Breadboard Construction
Produces a text-based flow diagram — in the style of an electrical breadboard schematic — capturing Places (screens, menus, modals), Affordances (buttons, fields, links), and Connection arrows showing navigation. The deliberately low-fidelity format avoids premature visual design decisions while still communicating the interaction structure clearly enough for a betting table to evaluate.
Rabbit Hole Excavation
Systematically interrogates your proposed solution for technical unknowns, edge cases, and scope traps that could derail a cycle mid-stream. Each rabbit hole is named explicitly and assigned a resolution path: spike it before betting, make it an explicit No-go, or constrain the solution to avoid it. Surfacing these before the bet is far cheaper than discovering them during building.
Pitch Document Assembly
Guides you through the complete five-section Pitch structure — Problem, Appetite, Solution (with breadboard or fat marker sketch), Rabbit Holes, and No-gos — producing a formatted document ready for betting table review. Each section is grounded in the shaping work done upstream, so the pitch is compiled from decisions already made rather than written cold.
Graded before it shipped.
Every skill is scored against independent scenarios for methodology fidelity before it goes live — not vibes, a rubric.
Shape Up Pitch Document
A structured five-section document (Problem, Appetite, Solution, Rabbit Holes, No-gos) formatted for a betting table decision. Contains the breadboard diagram, the scoped appetite, and all known risks explicitly called out — everything a team needs to decide whether this work deserves a cycle slot.
Breadboard Diagram
A text-based flow diagram showing Places (screens, menus), Affordances (buttons, fields, links), and Connection arrows — the Shape Up way to communicate solution structure without committing to visual design. Gives builders enough structure to start without over-specifying how it should look.
Rabbit Holes Register
An explicit list of technical unknowns, edge cases, and scope traps identified during shaping, each with a recommended resolution: spike before betting, mark as No-go, or constrain the solution to avoid it. Prevents mid-cycle surprises by surfacing risks while the work is still shapeable.
Grounded in the original work.
Every answer traces back to a real source and the practitioner who wrote it — not a secondhand summary. Here is the source of record.
Ryan Singer
Ryan Singer is the creator of the Shape Up methodology and a longtime product strategist at Basecamp (37signals), the company behind the Basecamp project management tool and Hey email service. He developed Shape Up through years of direct product development work at 37signals, documenting the full methodology in the freely available book Shape Up (basecamp.com/shapeup). Singer has shared the approach through the Shape Up podcast and multiple appearances on the Rework podcast.
Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters
Product strategist at Basecamp (37signals); creator of the Shape Up methodology; author of Shape Up (basecamp.com/shapeup)
Put it to work.
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