Resources
Shape Up resources
The book, Ryan Singer’s later work, talks and podcasts, tools for hill charts, and a glossary. Start with the book.
The book
- Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters Ryan Singer, Basecamp. Free to read online and the source of every term used here.
- Shape Up glossary The book’s own definitions.
- Adjust to Your Size The appendix on running Shape Up with different team sizes.
Ryan Singer: course and later work
- ryansinger.co Singer’s own site: articles, talks, and details of his “Shaping in Real Life” course and workshops.
- Common pitfalls when adopting Shape Up Where the book is Basecamp-specific and what adopting teams route around.
- End-to-End with Shape Up: a real-world case study A project followed from framing through shaping to building. Published 2025-11-18.
- Shaping Up Client Work Singer and Bruce van Zyl on working with clients. Published 2021-11-10.
Talks, podcasts and writing on client work
- REWORK: Shape Up with Clients David Nichols of Loupe, 2020-11-24.
- REWORK: Shape Up Ryan Singer on the book and the method.
- Lenny’s Podcast: Ryan Singer A long interview on how Shape Up works in practice.
- Shapers & Builders podcast Interviews with teams that adopted Shape Up, including Singer in episode one.
- Klaus Breyer: Redefining Client Work, the Agency’s Guide to Shape Up A product leader’s guide for agencies, 2023-09-22.
- Paul Boag: Pricing Projects as a Freelancer or Agency Owner Smashing Magazine, 2024-08-16. Covers appetite as a pricing conversation.
Tools
- Basecamp Where hill charts started, built into the product.
- Hill Chart for Jira (Shape Up Board), Curious Lab A paid Jira Cloud app.
- Hill Charts by Routific for Linear Treats a pitch as a Linear project and a scope as a labelled issue.
- Hillchart A hosted hill chart with embeds for Notion and Confluence.
- Hillia Hill charts meant to sit next to the tracker you already use.
- Free Hill Chart Builder Browser-based and no account, with PNG export.
- Shape Up Forum A community forum for teams implementing Shape Up.
Glossary
Every term below is from Shape Up. The definitions are short paraphrases; each links to the book’s own explanation.
- Appetite
- How much time you are willing to spend on a problem, decided before the solution is designed. In the book
- Betting table
- The meeting where decision-makers choose which shaped pitches to build in the next cycle. In the book
- Circuit breaker
- The rule that a project not finished within its cycle stops by default instead of being extended. In the book
- Cool-down
- The break between cycles, used for fixing bugs, exploring ideas and shaping the next bets. In the book
- Cycle
- A fixed block of time, six weeks in the book, in which a small team builds a shaped project. In the book
- Hill chart
- A chart that shows each scope as figuring things out (uphill) or getting it done (downhill). In the book
- Pitch
- A written, shaped proposal with a problem, appetite, solution, rabbit holes and no-gos. In the book
- Rabbit hole
- A technical or design risk that could swallow the time box unless it is found and patched during shaping. In the book
- Scope
- A slice of the project that can be finished independently, used in place of a task list. In the book
- Shaping
- The work of defining a project well enough to bet on, before it goes to a build team. In the book
- Small batch
- A project with an appetite of one to two weeks, run by a small team. In the book