We used Shape Up 100% for Hey.
6 weeks at a time! That’s the whole idea. Choose what is most important first, make a six week commitment, then pick the next most important thing. We never made a specific commitment longer than six weeks, except for the broad commitment that some number of cycles would go toward Hey instead of Basecamp.
For a while, the first set of cycles were purely R&D cycles. That means the work wasn’t really shaped, and the shaping and building happened in a blurry mix. Then once the key points of the design were settled, we switched into what we call “Production mode” with standard shaping, betting, building. Finally in the last couple cycles we ran in “Clean up” mode where there isn’t any specific shaping or betting, just a free-for-all to fix as many small things as possible.
Details on those three modes on this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/rjs/status/1259338296171192321?s=20