How we accidentally got agile teams to try something new without starting a fight

Let’s be honest, no one on our team was asking for another framework. Especially not one with a book attached. Agile was fine… until it wasn’t. Two-week sprints gave us structure, but not momentum. We’d fly through the backlog in a couple of days, then default to help-desk tickets to fill the time. Great for velocity charts, terrible for meaningful progress.

So we started experimenting.

Shape Up caught our attention — not as a silver bullet, but as a way to carve out time to think, plan, and build things that actually mattered. But the moment we said “Shape Up,” we could feel the resistance. Not because the idea was bad, but because people don’t want to be told they’re changing. They want to co-create something that fits how they work.

So we dropped the name. Stripped out the formalities. Shared the principles. Rebuilt it in our own voice. And slowly, over time, it started to stick.

This talk is about:

• How we blended Lean, Agile and Shape Up without turning it into a turf war
• Why giving things a name too early can kill good ideas
• What real buy-in looked like, and what broke along the way
• How we made space for soft skills, critical thinking and healthy chaos
• And what all this means in an AI-heavy future where process won’t save you, but people might

If you’ve ever tried to evolve your ways of working and hit a wall, or if you’re just tired of sprint retros that feel like group therapy with no outcomes, this talk is for you.