The Nine-Scopes Kickoff
At kickoff, have the builders translate the shaped idea into nine-or-fewer implementation chunks to test scope and build clarity.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
When a mixed-seniority team kicks off a shaped project, have the builders draw a grid and fill in at most nine major implementation scopes needed over the time-box. Nine sits at the top of the 'seven plus or minus two' cognitive limit — if the whole build fits in nine boxes you can hold the castle in your head; if it takes more than ten it has collapsed into unmanageable ticket-land.
Origin
Ryan Singer's kickoff exercise for Shape Up teams that aren't all senior (Basecamp's own senior teams ran kickoff loosely). Explicitly grounded in Miller's 'seven plus or minus two' cognitive-science principle.
Core principles
- 01The builders — not a product owner — define the scopes, because they understand the work
- 02Nine or fewer keeps the whole build holdable in one's head; more than ten is ticket-land
- 03The exercise surfaces hidden over-scope early ('this seemed reasonable but it's too much')
- 04It creates natural coaching moments between junior and senior engineers
How to run it
- 1
Draw a nine-box grid at kickoff
Take whatever was shaped and ask the build team to fill a grid with the nine major chunks of implementation that must happen over the time-box.
Pro tip For a six-week box that's ~30 business days, nine boxes is ~four days each — instant, rough sizing.
- 2
Let the builders define the scopes
The people doing the building translate the shaped idea into implementation scopes themselves, rather than receiving pre-written tickets from a product owner who doesn't understand the work.
Watch out When a non-builder writes the tickets, they hide unknowns and time bombs that sound reasonable but weren't authored by someone who understands the work.
- 3
Read the result as a scope-and-clarity signal
If it fits in nine or fewer boxes, you have a shared, holdable picture. If it won't fit, that's an early warning the scope is too big or the shaping wasn't clear enough.
Pro tip Watch for the coaching moment: a junior describing their approach in a box lets a senior say 'we've done that, use this instead.'
Watch out More than ten boxes means you've fallen into a hundred-ticket list that tells you nothing about whether you can hold the whole build.
In the wild
Singer has teams draw nine boxes of major implementation scopes at kickoff. Sometimes, once a shaped project is broken into the nine boxes, the team realizes 'even though it seemed reasonable, I don't think we can do this all' — the scope is visibly too big.
→ The team catches over-scope on day one of the build instead of in week four, and can renegotiate before committing.
Common mistakes
Letting a product owner write the tickets
When the person splitting work into tasks isn't the builder, the tickets carry hidden unknowns and 'time bombs' — the 'paper shredder' that turns one coherent idea into a hundred loosely-glued pieces.
Producing more than ~ten scopes
Past ten boxes you're in ticket-land: a long list of tasks that no longer lets anyone hold the whole build in their head or judge whether it's the right size.
Is it for you?
Best for
Mixed-seniority build teams kicking off a shaped project who need a fast shared picture and a scope sanity-check.
Not ideal for
Teams stacked entirely with senior engineers who can self-organize the build loosely (as Basecamp did).
From the transcript
“give me nine boxes of the nine major chunks that you think have to get implemented from an implementation standpoint”
“if you take six weeks that's like uh 30 business days you divide that by n it's like kind of like four days per box”
“the ux designers in your audience will know about this rule of seven plus or minus two”
From the episode
A better way to plan, build, and ship products
Ryan Singer (creator of “Shape Up,” early employee at 37sign