Shopify’s secret for staying ahead of the game | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

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.
• The provided text ends before this section is completed.

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.