Shortcut Reviews

Clubhouse brought us a new set of features and ways to organize stories and tasks that we didn't know we wanted/needed. We have always stuck with tools that were able to help improve our kanban based workflow rather than the simple project board tools like Trello that cater to everyone more than software/product development specifically.

There are few tools out there that provide what we are looking for: the ability to organize and label stories with more granularity than a single label (estimates, types, project, priorities, epic, etc), and the ability to have reports like velocity and burndown charts.

It is a very small thing, but it would be nice if we could adjust the color scheme of both things like labels beyond the default options, as well as adjust the overall interface colors.

1. The app is very easy to configure & set up.
2. The user experience is seamless & functionality is very self-explanatory.
3. There are multiple ways to configure each component, so you can set up the app according to what works best for you & your company. (No "one size fits all" model.)
4. The ability to set up different workflows for different departments has been a huge help for us.

1. It's a little hard to envision how each of the components should be set up for your organization when you're first getting in there (i.e., projects, workflows, milestones, epics, stories), so we ended up changing the setup as we went along after the initial configuration. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as it allowed us to improve the way we currently did things.
2. The biggest issue we have now, after using the app for a while, is that stories do not populate into the Gantt charts, only epics. This means if we have one-off tasks that are added as stories, those do not pull into the report we'd like. For that reason, we have to set up an entire epic just to set up a single story, for reporting purposes. I think it would be great if you had the option to pull the Gantt reports at the epic or story-level.

Does what we need it to do - create bug tickets

Not easy to filter, find or sort. Maybe I just don't know how to use the features, and I know I use them in a completely different fashion than Engineering does (we create tickets, they execute them), but each time someone says "just filter and find", I have no idea and can't figure it out. I also hear from their team about how hard it is to do what they need to do with the tickets once we create them. Not user friendly for sorting or tagging for projects.

I like the drag and drop the most. It makes managing tasks so much easier

A little confusing to use. The learning curve is steep.

1) Easy to learn - Even our junior members got on-boarded quickly despite their absolute lack of familiarity to such tools.
2) Tons of tagging options - Tickets can get multiple labels and the long list of standard metadata for cross-posting and maximum searchability.
3) Powerful search box - We get lots of tickets using the same set of keywords yet the search function seems to algorithmically know exactly which one we are looking for!

1) Comment formatting is not WYSIWYG
2) A bit pricey for smaller teams
3) Continuous development is great, but there's always a new key feature deployed quickly that will make you rethink your currently-established conventions. We found ourselves testing these, and even migrating to fully commit to using the new feature instead (e.g. milestone-centric vs iteration-centric). There's this unshakeable worry that there's a new feature yet again right around the corner and we may have to switch once more.

Before switching to Shortcut, we used Jira. While Jira has plenty of features, we found it a bit cumbersome and the performance of the interface was atrocious (everything single task was incredibly slow, even the most basic activities had a noticeable delay).

The first major benefit we saw with Shortcut was the speed of interaction - instead of waiting for the interface to catch up, we could just log in and get things done.

The integrations with various source control platforms (we use the Gitlab integration) also helps keep task statuses up to date without even having to open the web interface.

Overall the speed of the interface and the available integrations lead to a feeling that Shortcut never "gets in our way".

We started out paying for Shortcut (when it was still called Clubhouse), but were soon switched to a free plan without even having to ask. Although this was a nice gesture on their part, they then released a beta of their new product called Write. This beta is only available for paying users, which is understandable, but having been moved to a free plan meant we couldn't access it. This isn't a major issue, but starting our subscription back up would require going through the approval process with our accounting department again so we've just stayed on the free plan without access to Write so far.

Every org grows out of Github Issues, Trello, and Asana when they realize a) stories need relationships such as blocking/blocked; b) stories need task checklists; c) different groups have different workflows; d) stories are often mini-project briefs and need to read as such. However, once you find yourself in JIRA, which you've been told is the mature platform for mature orgs, you're operating a nuclear submarine, you need 3 sysadmins, nobody can find anything, and you want to throw your computer out the window. SC has the infrastructure but with the user-friendliness of everyday software. Think of how Mixpanel took what Omniture was doing and made it accessible to the everyday marketer. That's what Shortcut does for eng/prod teams. No sysadmin needed, everyone gets it.

Their API is well-documented and incredible. We do tons with Zapier because of how much they expose.

Their CS team is spectacular, inquisitive, friendly, helpful. They want their customers to succeed.

They have a one-click signup link which has made our onboarding process much faster

They have templated stories and checklists which we use across the org for everything from product launches through onboarding/offboarding hires.

very few dislikes. it's amazing. if i have to force criticism:

- If you work cross-departmentally, avoid multiple workflows, or you'll be having to look at multiple kanban boards daily
- the "dashboard" (home) isn't as useful as it seems like it should be so we all either use iterations or stories view for our daily lens
- shortcut and productboard both boast integration, but it's not great, and i think this is the fault of productboard

but really these criticisms represent like 5% negative compared to 95% enthusiastic positive

best project management software ive ever used, works for technical engineers and nontechnical marketing chaps like myself.

wish there was a REALLY simple version for mobile that showed me a minimalistic view of my cards or something really creative to change my life there, if anyone could create the perfect on the go project management view, it would be you guys!

Shortcut is easy to jump in, set up, and use right away. I also like the ticket creation modal as it's all in one screen and there's no scrolling.

The beauty of it - it's simplicity - can also be its downfall. It doesn't offer as much customization as other competitors do - such as release management, custom fields, complex workflows, etc.

I liked the ability to include various subtasks that you could assign to different individuals and teams within one project with a singular goal. This was great for cross-functional projects such as feature launches.

I thought the design could use some work. For example, Click-Up has a much more modern feel and is more aesthetically appealing.

Many of the features of this software are useful to our company. Our team has come to heavily rely on the roadmap view and reporting tools. These features have kept our company on track and increased our velocity in immeasurable ways.

A few of the features our team feels are missing from Shortcut are custom fields and release management. If our team was able to have a reliable release management system, it would be very impactful to our team and customers.

Shortcut does a great job allowing us to manage all facets of our product and being multiple teams together for what is most important, client and end user satisfaction. It follows standard agile flow but allows flexibility where engineers and non-engineers can use it alike.
We also utilize their API for templates epics and stories and it is great to work with.
Support team and client success managers have been a pleasure to work with when we’ve had conversations. They always are able to handle a situation or get us in touch with someone who can.
Lastly the product is always evolving and they are very transparent through their website and slack channel of what is coming next to make your life better!

Some things were less flexible such as naming conventions and required fields on stories/epics, but these are getting worked out over time (for ex projects are not required any more)

- Clean user interface
- Fast search
- Continuously adding of new, useful features
- Great integrations
- Free for teams of up to 10 users

- This is mostly me nitpicking, but I'd say reporting. It has been improving over time though.
- It would also be great if there was a tool for simplifying backlog grooming

I find the product to be very simple at the surface with deep capabilities. Previously, we were using Jira and I found the software to be overkill for many of the tasks that we perform. Additionally, so much of Jira's useful functionality (and the Atlassian suite as a whole) is hidden behind paywalls, 3rd party addon services, and little gouges along the way. I absolutely abhor that practice so finding Clubhouse was a godsend.

Customer service has been prompt and helpful, and though they have not implemented my feature request, I at least know that it has been prioritized.

Team collaboration is great with their Slack integration. My team posts bugs, hotfixes, feature requests in the proper project, and I am automatically notified via Slack. The whole team has visibility to their request's progress.

Navigating the nomenclature of Stories, Epics, Projects, Milestones, and how they should fit together is a bit taxing at first and takes getting used to. It would be helpful to have visual guides for someone like myself, but the documentation is available and well written.

This is where I discovered the depth of capabilities in Clubhouse. You can very simply manage your project with Stories, and you can very finely tune your progress and visibility by getting to know these different groupings.

Unlike other agile management platforms, Clubhouse is setup that you can get a lot of value from the simple Kanban board with the option to go deeper and track more in depth insights into the progress of your work.

We moved to Clubhouse from a setup of Trello with a ton of extensions to help manage the extra tracking we wanted to be doing, and I think the best analogy I can make is that Clubhouse is like Trello on steroids. But in saying that, it's far simpler and more effective than other bloated tracking software like Jira or Pivotal Tracker - which in my opinion try to please the managers who want a lot of fancy yet ultimately meaningless metrics at the expense of user experience for the development team who ultimately has to spend time keeping it up to date.

The GitHub integration which automatically moves cards as they progress through pull requests is a great example of how Clubhouse has considered that the development team is ultimately the user of the platform, and should be designed around getting them to use it effectively rather than bloating it for the sake of what management think looks good.

There isn't anything major that I would complain about, but there are some improvements like showing epic burn down charts by points instead of the number of stories that I've asked for a few times but haven't been implemented.

The reporting functionality also has a few bugs, but nothing major that stops it from being valuable.

Shortcut is "just right" for our needs, and thinking back about previous companies, would have been perfect in their needs, too. It is much more than a to-do tracker but doesn't overwhelm you with flexibility. My favorite part of this software is that it's story-centric. Epics are available, but they can play a supporting role if needed. Tasks are left to the developer to fill out themselves end up being merely a checklist. This paradigm shifts the focus to deliverables and prevents gamification by closing out menial tasks just to pump up ticket closures.

As a bonus, this standardizes the language of Epics/Stories/Tasks. There is no more endless debate on what should be what. The one thing I've always seen with Jira, especially in young teams, is that the flexibility of the product creates unproductive debate and confusion about terminology.

This product focuses on product delivery. For more general applications, like issue tracking or process management, it may not be the best for that.

I manage engineering workflow as well as my own as an individual contributor in Shortcut. I also keep track of ideas and requests for when I set out to build new products. I love using labels in Shortcuts for managing my own workflow - requests that come from different teams get different labels so members of that team can see everything I'm working on for them and reliably know what state projects are in. I try to keep as much communication in Shortcut stories as opposed to emails because being able to reference it in Shortcut is very valuable to me. The search functionality is really good and unless I've named something really weirdly I can always find what I'm looking for.

I haven't gotten familiar with using notifications in Shortcut and I rely on email notifications. This isn't to say that Shortcut doesn't have the right capabilities for notifications (commenting on stories is what I want notifications about), but just that I haven't really explored/figured it out which says something itself.

The software is so easy to use and was really easy to set up. Almost every integration you could need is also available to make workflow quicker and more automated.

Switching from Projects to Teams has been quite difficult and required that we rework our custom board and views used for our normal agile ceremonies.

The ability to use Shortcut the first day, integrate with our process easily and nicely, search items successfully every time, link items, all without a hiccup!

I wish more people in our organization could use it!!!! Just doesn’t fit their processes at the moment… I am working on it though!

Super easy to use, lightweight but powerful, and perfect for our use case which is software engineering.

Time tracking within the tool would be useful.

This software is a curated experience that intentionally limits setup and flows compared with other products like JIRA which are less "bounded." I think this is better for most teams which do not care to install extra plugins and fight with non-intuitive workflow items.

There are some quirks in group selection and application, filtering, and sorting that do not always let me cross-cut the data the ways I want.

I like the ease of use, from day one of setting up Clubhouse it just made sense and was easy to configure for our purposes. It was easy to jump in and start using without much learning curve for all of the team members as well. We love how much work we can have in a single work space and with powerful filtering, searching, everyone gets their perfect view for their purpose!

I wish there were more canned reporting features for Kanban workflows, but honestly it's not the end of the world since we have access to the REST API for building our own custom reports!

Right now our private Gitlab integration isn't working but what is amazing is that Clubhouse support and engineering is working through it with us. I love that about Clubhouse.

(Can you tell it's hard for me to find something negative about the software???)

Whether you’re part of a small software team or you’re integrated into a collection of agile teams at an enterprise software shop - Shortcut makes it easy and intuitive to manage the many integrated software projects of todays micro services oriented development style. We’ve found that Shortcut grew with us from 2 devs to 10 and we expect it to grow with us as we grow to 50.

Story management sometimes feels like a full time job, but at least Shortcut makes it a joy. For our open source projects we have a hard time integrating with issues on GitHub where public issues are generated, but for our private projects, the GitHub integration is lightweight and effective.

Seems silly, but for me, it's the ability to create tasks under a ticket, and be able to convert those into tickets on their own. Jira did not have this, and still doesn't as far as I know, but wouldn't matter - Shortcut is simple to use, and ready to go out of the box.

Doesn't have the brand recognition, so hard to convince others that its the correct solution to use.

Flexibility and ease of the software - Clubhouse is extremely easy to learn and provides the ability to mold the software and functionality to your team's workflows.
Additionally, the Clubhouse team is continuously adding new integration and features that are best practice for most modern and agile product & tech teams.

Not necessarily a specific con to Clubhouse but in general for all project management tools. Given the need for detailed requirements, it is necessary to write a lot of content on tickets. As such, the mobile experience is not on part with the browser desktop experience. That being said, I tend to create shell tickets on the mobile app or mobile view, then complete the tickets on a desktop when I have full functionality and familiarity.