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Criterion
Paper illustration of Shape Up with its method-specific working model.
Delivery
Shape Up
Paper illustration of two people facing each other, speech bubbles and an open interview notebook.
UX Research
User Interviews
A hypothetical failure makes concrete risks, signals, and fitting mitigations visible.
Decision Making
Pre-Mortem
Paper illustration of an assumption matrix with prioritized test cards
Decision Making
Assumption Surfacing
Purposedifferent
Shape Up helps clarify scope, sequence, and delivery flow. It makes work boundaries and decisions explicit and captures results as pitches, bet-table decisions, and hill charts.When teams derive needs only from assumptions and real motives are missing, user interviews give direct access to behavior and meaning. Conversations from the target group's everyday life make patterns, tensions, and open questions solidly visible.In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures.Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it.
Complexitydifferent
MediumLowLowLow
Timedifferent
6 Wochen Cycle + 2 Wochen Cool-Down30–60 min per interview20–45 min45-90 min
Participantsdifferent
2-4 pro Pitch1 participant per interviewSmall cross-functional group2-8
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshopWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Pitches, Bet-table decisions, Hill charts, Cooldown outcomesInterview Notes, Themes, Insight SummaryRisk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption logAssumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan
Tagsno overlap
PlanningDeliveryAutonomy
QualitativeResearchCustomerDiscovery
RiskDecisionFailurePlanning
AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery
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