Implementing Shape Up Across 21 Teams at GoSee Travel (with Agile Lead Bartwin van der Pols)

#3: Today I am speaking with Bartwin van der Pols and Melissa Matthews of GoSee Travel, a global car rental and motorhome rental site. Bartwin joined GoSee as an Agile Lead about a year ago and piloted Shape Up together with Melissa, a product manager on one of the teams at GoSee.

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 below 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, we talk about how Melissa's team got started with Shape Up, and the many pushbacks and doubts that Bartwin and Melissa had to navigate, even with the leadership level. Eventually, we'll learn how the team built momentum within a first cycle and was able to deliver a critical project months ahead of schedule. You'll hear us frequently come back to the topic of refinement, and how Shape Up pulled the team together and empowered, or maybe even forced them to collaborate more.

I'm excited to get to share these insights with you because the implementation of Shape Up at GoSee is the largest that I've witnessed to date. By the time of our recording, Bartwin had just kicked off the first cycle for a total of 20+ teams across GoSee travel.

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