Shopify’s secret for staying ahead of the game | Figma Blog

Shopify encourages teams to pursue bold, unconventional ideas instead of settling for incremental improvements. The company challenges standard practices in product discovery, planning, and decision-making, using visual collaboration tools to create more creative and inclusive discussions. Its approach suggests that deliberately disrupting familiar workflows can produce stronger, more original outcomes.

Challenge Documentation-First Product Work

• Traditional roadmapping often begins with a written document outlining the problem and proposed direction.
• Shopify’s Katarina Batina argues that this method can reinforce habits rather than clarify the real problem or uncover broader opportunities.
• Starting in a collaborative visual workspace such as FigJam helps teams “break their brains” out of linear thinking.
• Roadmap templates make metrics, key problems, proposed solutions, principles, assumptions, and dependencies explicit.
• This structure allows teams to explore possibilities more freely instead of simply reacting to a finished document.

Plan How You Plan

• Shopify adapted a FigJam template for an annual in-person planning session among largely remote colleagues.
• Team members completed the template beforehand, creating a shared baseline for discussion.
• During the meeting, they updated the plan in real time as strategic decisions were made.
• The shared workspace preserved the outcomes digitally, avoiding the need to photograph scattered sticky notes.
• The team considered this approach its most effective planning session to date.

Democratize Strategic Discussions

• Shopify treats design tools as the primary setting for discussing strategic product decisions.
• Visual collaboration gives people more ways to express ideas than written documents alone.
• This is especially important for employees who may have strong ideas but do not excel at articulating them in prose.
• In large meetings, participants can communicate through links, images, project snapshots, and sketches rather than relying entirely on text.
• The approach makes decision-making more inclusive and helps teams develop a forward-looking vision.

Sketch Ideas Instead of Overexplaining Them

• The article begins a further section arguing that sketching can help teams develop ideas that are difficult to express verbally.
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Shopify’s broader recommendation is to intentionally disrupt familiar processes: replace rigid documents with visual exploration, make planning collaborative and continuous, and give teams multiple ways to communicate ideas.