2 ms·
Basecamp's Shape Up is a Michelin restaurant brigade system for software
- Bocajmai 11mo agoI started researching how Michelin-starred restaurants coordinate their teams - not because I care about fancy food, but because they solve exactly this: small specialized teams creating something complex together under pressure. The parallels to software are exact. Front of house/back of house coordination. Pre-service meetings. The "pass" as a coordination point. Station ownership. The quiet kitchen principle. Then I discovered Basecamp's Shape Up is essentially their version of the brigade de cuisine system. 6-week cycles, betting table, appetite setting, cool-down periods. It maps perfectly. I wrote this to work through what small bootstrapped software companies can learn from how these organizations actually operate. Would love feedback from others dealing with this coordination problem.
- dangus 11mo agoWhile I can appreciate all of this, and I’ve seen other organizations using the Shape Up methodology, I think that Basecamp themselves are not a very good case study of success. They have been losing relative mindshare and possibly marketshare more recently. Its competitors are growing more aggressively.
- Bocajmai 11mo agoTrue, but is that a strategy problem rather than an operational one? Have they lost the ability to ship, or are they misaligned on what people want? You need both. I'm not sure I know the answer, but it's a very good point! Thanks