Ryan Singer (00:00:00): I often use this analogy of if you're doing a home renovation, you can have the most beautiful rendering of the new bedroom and we're going to 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 going to drastically change the cost and the time and everything. (00:00:16): What we need to do 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?" (00:00:37): We're going to go the other way around and we're going to 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? Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:54): Today my guest is Ryan Singer. Ryan was one of the first few hires at 37signals, and through his experience of building Basecamp and 17 years of building product at 37signals, he wrote a book called Shape Up, which shares a very different approach to building software. (00:01:10): 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. (00:01:22): I've noticed more and more teams adopting the Shape Up method, and especially with AI starting to change how we work and build product, there's this 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. (00:01:37): This episode is basically going to give you everything you need to give Shape Up a shot on your team or at your company to see if it fixes t...