How Did DNSimple Learn to Describe the Problem First?

On the show, DNSimple has used the Shape Up process from Basecamp for a couple of years. Framing, added to Shape Up after the original book, means writing the problem in a document and iterating until the understanding feels solid enough to design a feature. The team lacked that step at first, and adding it made the workflow make sense.

DNSimple is staffed almost entirely by engineers working at the product level, so the group had to retrain. People stopped themselves from writing solutions and focused on the problem, the people impacted, and the world people imagine after the problem is fixed. Only then did shaping begin, with the feature designed from that understanding.

A frame that is off sends the solution design off as well, and the result can look weird. More often, being forced to work in that order has helped DNSimple build better systems and understand the kinds of problems in front of DNSimple.