Ryan Singer on YouTube · Open on YouTube
Senior product design: owning outcomes · Proficient · Lesson 62 of 99 · 18 min video, then about 3 hours of practice
Scoping under fixed time: appetite, cuts and trade-offs
After this you can shape a piece of work to a fixed time budget, name what you are deliberately leaving out, and defend the cut in terms of the goal.
Why it matters
The senior skill hiding behind 'ships on time' is scoping: deciding how much a problem is worth (Basecamp calls it appetite), sketching a solution at the right level of abstraction, finding the rabbit holes before the team falls into them, and cutting scope rather than extending time. Learn the vocabulary of trade-offs (reach, value, effort, risk) and the habit of writing down what is out of scope as carefully as what is in. Trap: treating every cut as a compromise to apologise for. A well-argued cut is a design decision, and usually the most valuable one in the project.
How to use this resource
Eighteen minutes from the author of Shape Up on what 'shaping' is: setting an appetite, finding the elements of a solution, and de-risking it before a team commits. Directly usable on your next project.