what we build · part three
Design Shaping
Just-in-time shaping for the current release. Flows from the journey, states named as they emerge, fidelity growing with understanding. The user-facing artifacts grow alongside backbones — neither leading the other.
Events in this phase. Daily continues — short standups about flow, blockers, pulls. Shaping conversations happen pair-wise (designer with Product Owner, designer with tech lead) as wireframes mature. No formal ceremony — the work is the work.
Just-in-time, not upfront
Shaping is for the current release only. Backbones in release 2 and release 3 stay as one-sentence cards on the map. Shaping them now would be over-resolution: producing wireframes for stories that may move, change shape, or get rejected entirely as the team learns from release 1.
This is one of the largest differences from waterfall thinking. In waterfall, every story is fully designed before any code is written. The artifact is complete; the work is sequential. In flow, the artifact is partial by design — backbones are the entry-level resolution, full wireframes only for the stories about to flow into amigos. The map shows the team what's ahead. The shaping work is just-in-time — pulled into shape as it approaches the front of the queue.
Flows and wireframes — from the journey, not from backbones alone
The designer enters shaping with three things: the Feature Brief journey table, the Epic kickoff materials, and the release-1 backbones. That is enough. The journey table tells them the current state — what Gal actually does today, which phases work and which don't. The backbones tell them which scenes need to be designed.