The Principles of Shape Up – Ilya Sterin (VP Engineering at Medidata)

Shapers & Builders

#9: Today I am speaking with Ilya Sterin, VP of Engineering at Medidata, a clinical trial technology company from the US with around 3,000 employees.

This conversation is part of a series about companies that use Shape Up, a delivery framework originally created at Basecamp. If you've never heard of Shape Up, check the show notes for a link to the video "Shaping in a nutshell" by Ryan Singer, former head of strategy at Basecamp and author of the book "Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters".

In our conversation, Ilya explains his approach to introducing Shape Up at scale. We go deep on the core conceptual pillars within Shape Up, like "working iteratively", setting a big enough yet small enough batch size, and fixed time / variable scope. Instead of a dogmatic "book-in-hand" approach, Ilya chose to introduce Shape Up to his teams by reasoning from the principles of software engineering and avoiding putting a label on this "new way of working" as much as possible.

If you feel like Shape Up might help your team improve but are afraid of being turned down, Ilya's experience might just be what you need to get started. Enjoy!

Links:
Ilya's website: https://ilyasterin.com/
Ilya on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyasterin/
Ilya on Twitter: https://twitter.com/isterin
Medidata: https://www.medidata.com/
Shaping in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8M23wVjXk
Shapers & Builders job board: https://www.shapers.builders