If you've been in software development for any time, you've sat through your share of standups, planning meetings, and retrospectives. Scrum has dominated for years, but there's growing frustration among engineers. Many are turning to Shape Up instead. Here's why.

Sprint vs Cycle: Two Different Rhythms

Scrum works in short sprints—typically two weeks. You plan, build, review, repeat. It sounds efficient, but here's what actually happens:

• You spend 1-2 days planning each sprint
• Just as you get into flow, it's time for another review
• Teams rush to close tickets as the sprint ends
• Deep technical problems get split across sprints

Shape Up uses six-week cycles instead. Here's the difference:

• You get a full six weeks to solve problems end-to-end
• No daily standups interrupting your focus
• Two-week cooldown periods for bugs and exploration
• Teams build complete features, not fragmented pieces

The six-week timeframe isn't random—it's just long enough to build something substantial but short enough to keep urgency high.

Process & Roles: Less Ceremony, More Building

Scrum comes with a lot of overhead:

• Product Owner managing the backlog
• Scrum Master facilitating meetings
• Daily standups
• Sprint planning
• Backlog refinement
• Sprint review
• Retrospective

That's a lot of meetings. One study found that developers in Scrum teams spend up to 15% of their time in ceremonies. That's more than a full day every two weeks just talking about work.

Shape Up strips this down to the essentials:

• Upfront shaping (before the cycle starts)
• Betting table (replacing backlog grooming)
• Teams working autonomously
• Cooldown for reflection and bugs

No daily standups. No sprint reviews. Just enough structure to keep things on track.

Developer Perspective: Autonomy Matters

Ask engineers what they hate most about Scrum, and many will point to the constant interruptions and micromanagement. Daily standups break focus. Story points create artificial pressure. Tasks are often pre-defined down to the smallest details.

Shape Up gives developers breathing room:

• Teams decide how to implement solutions
• No daily progress reports
• Work shown on hill charts that reflect reality (uphill = figuring things out, downhill = executing)
• Flexible scope within boundaries

One engineer who switched put it this way: "With Scrum, I felt like I was filling out timesheets. With Shape Up, I feel like I'm solving problems."

The hill chart approach acknowledges something Scrum often misses—a lot of software development is figuring out unknowns, not just executing known tasks.

Tools Support: Lighter and More Focused

Scrum has the advantage of widespread tool support. Jira, Monday, ClickUp—they all have built-in support for sprints, burndown charts, and velocity metrics.

Shape Up was originally built for Basecamp, but you don't need their full platform to use the method. Teams can use:

• Basecamp (if you want the complete package)
• Hillia (for hill charts without switching platforms)
• Simple boards in any tool

The key difference is what these tools emphasize. Scrum tools track velocity, burndown, and completion percentage. Shape Up tools show where teams are in solving problems—are they still figuring things out, or executing a clear plan?

Hill charts are especially helpful for technical teams because they honestly represent uncertainty. When you're implementing something new, you don't know exactly how long it will take. Hill charts make this visible instead of hiding it.

When to Choose Shape Up

Shape Up works especially well for:

• Small to medium engineering teams
• Product-led companies
• Teams tired of excessive process
• Projects with flexible scope but fixed timelines
• Organizations that trust their developers

Scrum might still make sense if you:

• Need predictable velocity metrics
• Have contractual delivery requirements
• Work with junior teams needing structure
• Have dependencies across many teams

Try It Out

The good news is you don't have to go all-in at once. Try Shape Up for one feature cycle. See if your team produces better work with fewer interruptions.

Many teams find that hill charts alone—even without adopting all of Shape Up—improve their ability to communicate progress. The concept of "uphill" and "downhill" work gives everyone a shared language about where things really stand.

Hillia makes it easy to add hill charts to your workflow without changing everything else. It's a simple way to start bringing Shape Up benefits to your engineering team.

Conclusion

Scrum isn't going away, but Shape Up offers a refreshing alternative for teams drowning in process. Six-week cycles give engineers the focus time they need for deep work, while still maintaining the right level of urgency.

The biggest difference isn't in the diagrams or the terminology—it's in how it feels to actually build software. Engineers using Shape Up spend more time in flow and less time explaining what they did yesterday.

And that's something worth trying.