Corentin

CTO

@Dashdoc

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Xpedition Guilds - 9 mars 2021

REX Méthode Shape-up

Fabien

Product Manager

@Dashdoc

Kevin

Head of Product

@Sencrop

Mathieu

CTO

@Sencrop

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• No focus - working on all the scope of the application without clear objective
• Waterfall model product -> design -> development
• Focus on solution instead of problems.
• Lack of end-to-end ownership: too much of front vs. back development
• Management's desire to switch to autonomous and focused product teams

=> Low empowerment of the developers feeling like an IT service department.

​

La baseline “Stop running in circle” illustre bien notre feeling à ce moment là.

About Shape-up

• A Product development methodology �created by Basecamp
• Cycle of 6 weeks with 2 weeks of cooldown
• You start by shaping the problem you want to tackle.
• Help to ship meaningful products on time, with more team autonomy

+16 000 in-field sensors

+10M data-points per day

Hardware Product + Data platform

A platform to help farmers to reduce their crop risk, with a positive

agro environmental footprint

Agtech

About Sencrop

In Lille, France - serie B

80 european employees

Founded in 2016

+16 000 in-field sensors

+10M data-points per day

Hardware Product + Data platform

A platform to help farmers to reduce their crop risk, with a positive

agro environmental footprint

Agtech

About Sencrop

In Lille, France - serie B

80 european employees

Founded in 2016

Septembre 2015

Création de Truckfly. TripAdvisor des conducteurs routiers, plus de 450 000 téléchargements.

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Août 2017

Création de Dashdoc, la plateforme de gestion de transport en ligne pour les transporteurs.

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Juillet 2018

Rachat de Truckfly par Michelin.

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Août 2020

Dashdoc a plus de 200 clients

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Janvier 2021

Plus de 150 000 transports par mois

35 collaborateurs

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Transport management platform

Why did we change our methodology?

Xpedition Guilds - REX Shape-up

​

• No focus - working on all the scope of the application without clear objective
• Waterfall model product -> design -> development
• Focus on solution instead of problems.
• Lack of end-to-end ownership: too much of front vs. back development
• Management's desire to switch to autonomous and focused product teams

=> Low empowerment of the developers feeling like an IT service department.

​

La baseline “Stop running in circle” illustre bien notre feeling à ce moment là.

Sencrop

Product

Design

Dev

Previously on ScrumBan methodology - 2 weeks sprint - small team

• No time to breathe
• No respect of sprint deadline
• Never ending trello kanban and bug fixes...

​

High rhythm

• No focus & clear objectives
• Focus on solution instead of problem
• No time for product discovery

​

Focus & problem

• Waterfall model (product -> design -> dev)
• Data guys outside of the team
• Devs feeling like an IT service.

​

Lack of empowerment

Shape-up baseline “Stop running in circle” is our exact feeling at this moment

​

• No focus - working on all the scope of the application without clear objective
• Waterfall model product -> design -> development
• Focus on solution instead of problems.
• Lack of end-to-end ownership: too much of front vs. back development
• Management's desire to switch to autonomous and focused product teams

=> Low empowerment of the developers feeling like an IT service department.

​

La baseline “Stop running in circle” illustre bien notre feeling à ce moment là.

Sencrop

Product

Design

Dev

Previously on ScrumBan methodology - 2 weeks sprint - small team

• No time to breathe
• No respect of sprint deadline
• Never ending trello kanban and bug fixes...

​

High rhythm

• No focus & clear objectives
• Focus on solution instead of problem
• No time for product discovery

​

Focus & problem

• Waterfall model (product -> design -> dev)
• Data guys outside of the team
• Devs feeling like an IT service.

​

Lack of empowerment

Shape-up baseline “Stop running in circle” is our exact feeling at this moment

Dashdoc

Previously -> Scrum with 2 weeks sprints

Pain points:

• Mini-waterfall feeling:
• Cutting into small pieces sometimes feels very artificial -> big picture is lost in the details, refactoring opportunities are lost
• Pieces distributed to all devs -> line assembly work with integration hell at the end of the sprint
• PM in charge of cutting and planning-> a lot of work is shifted to PM
• Feeling that the best developers liked Scrum the least
• Low dev ownership

How did we start Shape-up ?

Xpedition Guilds - REX Shape-up

• PM read the book, then all the team.
• PM write the pitchs : 90% about the problem => Something very new for everyone.
• Betting table with Co-founders / Head of Product-Soft-Data / Lead devs
• Cycle of 6 weeks - Cooldown of 2 weeks.
• Bug management : during cooldown + 1 dev “Ops of the week”.

Sencrop

Dashdoc

We (CTO and PM) read the book and shared a few articles with the team, then presentation to whole Dashdoc team

Almost vanilla version of Shape Up:

• Unsure first about the 6 weeks cycle + 2 weeks cool down -> gave it a go with a full cycle (6 weeks duration quite common among startups)
• PM in charge of all the shaping (but exchange with relevant people along the way)
• Betting table with co-founders (CEO / CTO / VP Sales / Tech lead) + PM

Only thing we did not keep from the beginning was 100% focus -> we kept dedicating two mornings per week for bugs

A few cycles later

Xpedition Guilds - REX Shape-up

• Very good feedback from the team about the transition
• Business partners involved in the teams
• Dev empowerment: they design solutions instead of just coding them
• Focus first on problem 💚
• Less front vs. back, more “vertical” feature development
• Help in prioritization

Sencrop

• Bug management & ops: not an easy topic
• Betting table: management vs empowerment
• Uncomfortable for some developers (start of cycle - solution uncertainty)
• Lack of visibility on technical stakes and choices
• Not well adapted to topics with lot of technical work (eg. migrate a feature to a new stack)

👍 👍

👎 👎

A good transition to autonomous product teams model.

Sencrop

Where we are now

Agro

Weather

Growth

...

3 autonomous teams of 3-5 people focused on business challenges

Model ready to scale - we’re hiring :-)

2 weeks cooldown

6 weeks batch

Betting table replaced by team ownership

Press release

for internal communication

Start of cycle: Design/PMs lead discovery workshops

Bug management : team responsible for his scope - still WIP

Dashdoc

6 months later

Great experience 👍 -> we deliver usable and relevant features, dev are empowered and PM is more focused on the problem and less on planning

🧠 Learned

• One Slack channel per pitch -> contributions by anyone interested
• Sales lack a “feature roadmap” → orientation meeting
• Added head of operations to betting table
• Pitch presentation by PM + CTO for each team
• Everyone can write a pitch → only one pitch from third party made it
• Not all dev can work alone on a pitch
• 1 Product Designer can only do serious user testing on 1-2 pitches

🧐 Still working it out

• Iterate quickly to get user feedbacks early
• Prioritize small improvements once the feature is in the wild and the cycle is “closed” vs new client engagements
• Split the teams while our product is still a big monolith
• Mixing several small batches into one cycle
• Efficient orientation meeting
• Sync on API specs
• Balance between delivery and shaping

Thank you !

Questions and answers

Xpedition Guilds - REX Shape-up