Breaking Down The Work
Recently, I had to make some repairs to my grandfather’s 1996 Dodge pickup. It wasn’t the kind of job I could knock out in one sitting. I’m not a mechanic, and between work and family, I had to fit it in where I could. I had to order parts, remove old components, and deal with the occasional broken bolt. Some days, I could only prep a few parts for reinstallation. Eventually, piece by piece, I got the major components back on, topped off the fluids, and tested it out.
The way I tackled those repairs reminded me a lot of how we break down work as a team. We can’t do everything at once. We take things step by step—starting with the essentials, validating our approach, and making steady progress toward a working solution. Three key practices help us do that:
Let’s take a closer look at how these principles help us build better software, one piece at a time.
Building Lean Features
Our goal is to build the simplest version of a feature, validate its value with customers, and defer enhancements until they are proven necessary. This helps us avoid two common pitfalls: overbuilding too soon and overcommitting to a roadmap idea.
We start by focusing on customer struggles rather than making assumptions. Once we’ve identified the core problem, we build the leanest possible solution and gather feedback early. If enhancements seem valuable, we apply the same process—starting small, testing assumptions, and iterating based on real usage. This approach keeps us from getting locked into a rigid feature set. It allows us to make meaningful progress while staying flexible enough to shift when a better opportunity emerges.
Working in 6-Week Cycles
We used to work in 2-week sprints toward trimester-long goals, but about a year ago, we shifted to 6-week Shape Up cycles. The difference has been night and day.
Two-week sprints often felt too short to make real progress, yet four-month goals felt too broad to track effectively. With 6-week cycles, we aim to build something meaningful within a focused timeframe without overcommitting. At the end of each cycle, we reassess and decide what to build next.
This structure is informed by our broader strategy but not rigidly tied to it. It also makes it easier to accommodate holidays, vacations, and personal time—things that could easily disrupt shorter sprint cycles.
Keeping a Tight Feedback Loop
Sharing work early and often keeps us aligned and prevents unnecessary roadblocks. The key is finding the right balance—you don’t want to overshare, but you also don’t want to go too long without a check-in. A few guiding questions help determine when to ask for feedback:
When the answer is yes, that’s when I share my work—whether through quick walkthrough videos, chat threads, or async updates. We don’t want to create distractions, but we also don’t want to miss opportunities for valuable input. Typically, I can get feedback at least once a week.
While no process is perfect, these principles help our small team take on the right amount of work and spend our time wisely. They also let us ship more frequently, validate ideas faster, and avoid spending months on features that may not be the right fit.
How does your team break down the work?
Metrics
When comparing to recent weeks, and historically, our metrics seem to be in a steady state. For a long time our marketing push had been toward teams practicing agile and we’ve delivered that core product set. As we pursue our product roadmap, we will be pushing for a new S-curve as we plan to tackle broader markets. We want to enable knowledge workers to run any kind of collaborative process on Parabol with workflows that make the best use of their institutional knowledge.
This week we…
…gathered for some social time and experimented with Luna Park. ****About once a month we plan some all-hands social time. This month we played several fun games on Luna Park. We look forward to trying more games from their extensive library.
…hit several milestones on our Public Sector team. Here are the highlights:
…finished out an MVP of our Notes + Insights feature. Our Notes feature allows you to jot down any information during and in between meetings. The super power behind Notes is asking the built-in AI to help you summarize learnings and trends from meetings and shape it directly into your notes for planning and reporting purposes. Watch a demo on Loom
Next week we’ll…
…take a break. Well, sort of…for some of us ‘spring break’ is upcoming. We’ll be taking time to recharge, travel, or spend time with family. For years we’ve encouraged finding a healthy balance between leaning in and stepping away. I’ll be out camping with my family, see ya in the following week. ??
Have feedback? See something that you like or something you think could be better? Please write to us.