How we Shape Up Monster Projects (Tribe Social)
Discover how Tribe Social ships complex SaaS features fast by shaping products visually before writing code — reducing scope creep and accelerating delivery.
Posted by
Most teams ship slowly because they start coding too early.
At Tribe Social, we do the opposite.
Our entire development philosophy is built around shaping before building — turning messy ideas into clear, intentional projects before a single developer touches a line of code. This is how we’re able to ship complex SaaS features with a tiny team, often just one builder per project.
This Tuesday’s training was a behind-the-scenes look at exactly how we’re doing that inside Tribe Social, our own community platform — a product we bootstrapped in 2020 and have been evolving ever since.
The Reality: Years of Technical Debt → A Strategic Rewrite
Like many founders, our earliest MVP decisions were fast and scrappy:
- Some features lived in a MySQL database
- Others ended up inside Firebase
- We experimented with FlutterFlow before fully moving into native Flutter code
- And not all of those systems talk to each other cleanly
So before diving into another round of feature requests, we hit pause and asked a bigger question:
“If we were rebuilding this platform today from scratch, how would we structure it?”
That question led us into a full architectural reshaping of the product — done visually before technically.
Breadboarding Before Building
Inside the training, Bruce walked through the messy middle of one of our ongoing “monster projects.” Here’s what that looks like behind the curtain:
✅ We sketch the current flow
✅ We sketch the ideal flow
✅ We mark what doesn’t belong in scope
✅ We only commit when we see the path clearly
Instead of drowning inside Notion cards or long requirements docs, we use simple diagrams — just enough fidelity to think clearly.
If it can’t be understood visually in 30 seconds, it’s too complicated to build.
Why This Method Lets Us Move Faster (Not Slower)
This shaping process helps us:
| Without shaping | With shaping |
| Features balloon in scope | Scope is intentionally small + shippable |
| Endless unknowns during development | Unknowns are solved before coding |
| Team confusion | Team alignment |
| “Rewrite later” debt | Quality on first ship |
| 4 months “in the weeds” | Monthly momentum, visible progress |
We don’t plan features by days or tasks — we plan them in appetites (what we can reasonably ship in a month). Every month ships something concrete.
Example: Group Integrations
In the livestream, Bruce previewed one of the next major upgrades: Group Integrations — a new system that will allow us to plug in external tools (like AdEvent, Zapier, analytics, etc.) as native in-app tabs.
Instead of building 100 one-off customizations per client…
We’re creating a way to spin up new integrations in an afternoon, using AI-assisted scaffolding + a shared library.
That’s the compound benefit of shaping: once the pattern is right, everything gets faster.
Shaping = Clarity for Clients, Too
This process isn’t just for us — it’s how we collaborate with clients.
Instead of long meetings, giant PRDs, or guess-and-check development, we give clients a simple breadboard view of their product. It’s fast, visual, and easy to align on outcomes.
When expectations are clear, development becomes execution — not chaos.
Why We Share This Publicly
We don’t do all-hands meetings, and we don’t pretend to be a giant agency.
We’re a small, elite, product-focused team obsessed with:
- Building smarter, not bigger
- Removing technical debt at the root
- Giving entrepreneurs real leverage through software