We don’t have a roadmap

We often get asked at Aiir if something is on our roadmap.

The truth is, we don’t have one. No roadmap. No 6 or 12 month plan.

So how do we work?

In a pattern of 6 weeks, followed by 2 weeks, and repeat.

It begins with everyone in the company being able to pitch ideas.

What do we feel like doing? What’s a priority? What would be interesting or fun? What would customers love? What have we been putting off long enough? What would reduce admin burden? etc.

Some of these ideas are “shaped” — our knowledge, the constraints, and an appetite (time we want to spend) come together into a document.

In the 2 weeks (aka “the cool-down”), we look at what’s on the table. We make decisions and form a plan for the 6 weeks ahead. It’s posted up for everyone to see, so we all know what we’re working on.

Some projects are small ~1–2 weeks, others longer ~4 weeks, some take the full 6 week cycle. Some are solo, some are a collaborative — usually a team of 2 — a designer and a developer.

The 6 weeks is then head down, crack on.

We favour asynchronous communication over real-time wherever possible, so people can participate and digest when it suits them and aren’t lost in distracting chats.

We write up our discussions and set out to-dos. Calls are ad-hoc and ideally 1–2–1. No meetings. At the end of each day, everyone writes up and shares what they worked on that day.

Projects are trimmed where required. Scope creep avoided. A deadline is a deadline. When the 6 weeks are up, it’s time to ship, or not. Incomplete work goes on the shelf, deadlines aren’t moved, unless exceptional.

Then it’s back to the 2 week cool-down. Anyone can work on anything they like during this time. Learn something new. Fix some bugs. Try out an idea. Work on a small project, off-schedule. And back to figuring out what comes next.

6 weeks is plenty of time to get something meaningful done, but not so much time that you can’t see the horizon. When the finishing line is barely visible, it’s easy to feel like “we’ve got forever to get this done”.

We tried 6–12 month roadmaps, but they didn’t work for us. The work we start 6 months from now should be based on the circumstances at the time, not how we feel now. And who knows what will have changed in that time?

We didn’t invent this way of working — it’s known as Shape Up, from the folks at 37signals. If you want to learn more, this video explains it in a nutshell.

It won’t work for everyone, but we’ve been doing it since the start of 2021 and we’ve never been happier with the work we’re doing. Thanks for reading!

I originally wrote this as a Twitter thread.