AL #005: Crypto Projects Should Adopt the 6 Week Cycle

The planning method from Basecamp is a surprisingly good fit for non-iterative innovation.

Crypto Founders often come from companies that use some form of sprints to ship software.

Sprints resolve the inherent tension of scope & time predictability by being a little loose on scope. When work slips, it can be moved to the next cycle.

This can work well for iterative and constantly improving products like subscription software or products that have ongoing customer feedback needing frequent re-prioritization…

…But sprints are much less useful in crypto. We cannot “incrementally ship” updates once a contract is audited and live on mainnet.

UIs, integrations, tutorials, simulations and other large deliverables also benefit from being bounded. Our space thrives on 0-1 innovation rather than 1-n iteration (see protocols like Uniswap which release in big versions).

The 6-week cycle is not just an arbitrary number, it’s a method used by successful product organizations Basecamp and Intercom who called it the “Goldilocks of product timeframes”.

Here’s how to start running a 6-week cycle process for your crypto product.

1. Split your calendar into 2 month blocks

The ideal approach is splitting the year in six two-month blocks. Each block will involve 6-weeks of concentrated work to ship the plan and 2-weeks of “cooldown” work: bugs, paying off technical debt, writing documentation, doing risky technical experiments, planning, etc.

If your organization uses OKRs (quarterly objectives), you may want to follow the Intercom approach and work in 6-week cycles without an explicit cooldown period.

2. Shape one piece of work for the next cycle

To kick off your first cycle, shape one piece of work. Make it clear enough for developers to work on but ambiguous enough so they can work out the interesting details.

Struggling with fitting something in six weeks? That's mostly a philosophical issue:

3. Kick off the block with a pre-scope

Ryan Singer recommends starting work with the riskiest tasks.

To do that, developers first translate high-level requirements into specific technical tasks.

After that, identify tasks with the most uncertain timeframes. This could be because the task involves finding and learning a new dependency, it is an inherently unpredictable process like performance improvement or just due to technical complexity.

4. Finish one small risky feature

Create a quick win by finishing a small-scoped risky feature. Prefer “vertical slices”.

For example, if you are building a web3 analytics application, build towards a working version that doesn't look very good but shows a subset of correct data from the back-end.

Don't build the perfect batch data ingestion job ahead of time.

Don't build a pretty UI that doesn't work.

It’s much easier to iterate from a vertical slice.

5. Get things across the line

As the 6-week cycle is coming to an end, aggressively de-prioritize to make sure the cycle objectives are delivered.

Being strict about timelines may create some short-term pain but ultimately leads to improved planning and scope management / alignment in the long run.

6. Cooldown: Fix bugs, technical debt and do fun experiments

This 2-week period between 6-week cycles is the developer's favorite. Use it to fix bugs, explore new technical areas, up-skill as well as shape work for the upcoming cycle.

7. Prepare for next cycle: Host your first “betting table”

To prepare for the following cycle properly, host a “betting table” meeting. The key to the meeting is seeing each project as a “bet” and choosing a number of bets that make sense in the next cycle.

It may be tempting to think that your small team can implement and deploy your smart contract, create a UI, write a couple of integrations all in a span of 6-weeks. The betting table forces us to question what truly feels most important right now knowing that we can revisit that thinking in 2 months time.

If you would like to adopt the 6-week cycle, I recommend reading the freely available Shape Up book which describes the process in much more detail.

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