Shortcut Reviews

Pros

We're a scrum team developing software in the news industry. We switched from PivotalTracker to Clubhouse, and the ease of setup and how quickly we were able to learn the product was amazing. It took me weeks to get a grasp of PivotalTracker, but within a morning we were up and running on Clubhouse and loving it. The software looks clean, appealing, and intuitive, and it is so easy to learn and use that you will wonder why you used anything else ever. And the price point is easy to swallow, too. We love it!

Cons

Clubhouse is still missing robust sprint related tools. There are great workarounds in place, and they will be releasing those soon, so no hesitation on recommending it. But once they roll those features out it will be even better.

Pros

- Simple to learn and navigate so the team could quickly start using the product after switching- Love the dark mode and the colour coding of different story types i.e bug, feature or chore so it's easy to see things at the high level- Easy to create sprints and I like the summaries provided on the story points

Cons

- You can only write stories in markdown text. Not a big issue since I've become really good at it! But it'd be good if there was a text editor instead- Sometimes when I create a story and I accidentally click out of it, I lose the progress. It'd be good if they had a draft functionality where the stories get created as a draft straight away

Alternatives Considered

Jira

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

We needed something that was more focused on sprint management

Switched From

Notion

Reasons for Switching to Shortcut

JIRA has a quite suite of features however it was too complex for what we were looking for. We need something to track our sprints and features and shortcut was perfect for that.

Pros

This is an adequate task management/tracking software. It has a fantastic Zendesk integration and multiple customizable fields. It also boasts decent search and filtering functions but it isn't particularly user-friendly and filling out all the fields that make it function well takes a great deal of time (hence the title of this review).

Cons

There are no AI/smart suggestions for related epic/team fields so every time you make a new ticket you have to search through them by scratch. They also don't offer a great tag database or tag definitions so you have to create naming conventions separately offline. You also can't use rich text in story descriptions.

Pros

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".

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Jira

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

This software simplified the product management pipeline and offered the best toolsets for our light touch pipeline.

Switched From

Jira and monday.com

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

Swimlane, Jira, monday.com and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

A friend told me that Clubhouse was effectively "JIRA but with a designer cofounder" and that's accurate.

Switched From

Trello

Pros

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!

Cons

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)

Alternatives Considered

Jira, Basecamp and ClickUp

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

Wanted one tool with more power and better price.

Switched From

Trello and monday.com

Reasons for Switching to Shortcut

Most flexible and best bang for your buck.

Pros

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

Cons

- 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

Alternatives Considered

ZenHub

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

JIRA felt feels like an oil tanker, where most companies we need a tugboat, i.e. lean, powerful and agile. JIRA also gives you infinite customizability options, which often leads to over-complication and analysis paralysis.

Switched From

Jira

Reasons for Switching to Shortcut

The other tools we evaluated were either too simple for our needs (lack of features) or lacked in usability. We often underplay the importance of the joy of using a certain software product. I continually found that I had to beg people to keep other tools updated with the current state of affairs, wherewith Clubhouse they simply opted to do it themselves. The other options just didn't compare to Clubhouse.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Trello and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

Jira was too expensive and everyone hated it.

Switched From

JIRA Service Management

Reasons for Switching to Shortcut

More flexible and cheaper

Pros

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!

Cons

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!

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Visual Studio, Jira and Microsoft Project

Reasons for Choosing Shortcut

Cost, ease of use, simplicity and yet the depth of the product was exceptional!

Switched From

Microsoft Visual Studio, Jira and Microsoft Project

Reasons for Switching to Shortcut

Shortcut hits all of the notes for us! It’s simple and yet offers so many features!

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

As a solely Kanban tool it's really useful, but the different tags features (labels, projects, milestones) help to turn it more useful when working in a SCRUM process. I think it's the most complete kanban board that I tried, with nice points assignment for the stories, filters and search that work well. Integration with github also works very well, allowing to integrate PRs and commits with the stories.

Cons

I miss some feature like editing content as Notion offers, but still I think the purpose of this tool is different.

Pros

* It embraces the modern development process
* It's fast and responsive
* Almost all you need is in one screen
* It has multiple layers of organization (story, epic, milestone)

Cons

* The higher layers of organization do not 100% align with our process
* Some features are not available on different layers and it seems arbitrary. For example, you can't get a burn down on a sprint if that Sprint is not tracked as a "milestone". So if you are using Milestones to track large scale projects (maybe quarter goals or multi-epic initiatives) you have no way to track how your Sprint is going. Either they need a first-class Sprint concept, or allow burn downs on labels.

Pros

Clubhouse has been really easy to onboard to, curate our roadmap of epics and milestones, track stories across projects, itemize our projects (website vs marketing vs platform vs api vs apps) and segment our work across them but rolling up under the related epics with per project/epic/milestone velocity reporting.

Cons

Figuring out the expected associations between Projects, Milestones -> Epics and how it fits into your product structure took a little trial and error. The main thing I like the least is that as a developer, I'm part of several teams (segmented by Product, Engineering, and Marketing, etc) each with different workflows, and that means I lack a continuous backlog to know "whats next" - I end up having to check each Team to do some mental prioritization to know whats next.

Pros

Can branch out the epic easily from origin when too much topic / stories relate to one single task, easy to manage.

Cons

Report : difficult to view milestone and every team member epic / stories completion, declared start and end date vs actual end date.Charging fee : I have team member join and leave, empty seat is a waste of money.

Pros

I have found that the ability for me to create story templates for my team has improved the quality of the requirements for features, increased the number of test cases we identify before implementation, and has decreased the amount of time it takes my engineers to push fixes for bugs.

Cons

I would say one thing I feel is missing is the ability to see status of team members across multiple workflows. I can click through each one and jot down notes, but when there’s a critical bug it would be nice to just see a birds eye view of who’s working on what so I know who to give it to.

Pros

It's relatively easy to use, and the Slack integration makes tickets relatively easy to create.

Cons

It's not super opinionated on the workflow as opposed to Asana. I can understand why, though, given it's meant to model enterprise workflows.

Pros

Does what we need it to do - create bug tickets

Cons

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.

Pros

It's easy to use and organize, and there are a lot of customizable features that the previous software I used did not have.

Cons

I wish you could add blockers that aren't other stories, i.e. if I am blocked on something because I need to go confirm something with a Stakeholder, that's not easily indicated within Shortcut. We end up using a Workflow State for "Blocked" stories instead of using the Relationships feature.

Alternatives Considered

Jira

Switched From

Pivotal Tracker

Pros

We love the team collaboration and flexible storyboard features. It works well across disciplines such as scrum and kanban.

Cons

It's difficult to rank and order the importance of UserStories relative to other systems I've used.

Alternatives Considered

Jira

Pros

It's amazing to just have everything work logically out of the box. The API access allowed me to integrate Shortcut with my tooling to make tagging commits and code far simpler than ever before.

Cons

There's definitely a lot of room for improvement with auxiliary features like the built-in WYSIWYG document editor, and sometimes the rigidity of the project layout does get somewhat cumbersome if you ever need to deviate slightly from the main feature set.

Pros

Manage projects in hierarchy using EPICS, STORIES and TASKS, and be able to label them based on your firm's development process (example: sprint_5, design_discussion, etc.) and define different phases anyway you like, such as Backlog, Development, Review, Deployment and Completion. Then you have different views of the projects at any time, like Report, Status.

Cons

I wished there could be a way to attach an identifier to each of the tasks, in case that one would use it when checking in the code or communicating with others

Pros

This product is simple and easy to use! The features Shortcut offers are intuitive. It is very easy to filter tasks or bugs and all the data looks very organized. Each task/bug story is very easy to drag and drop to a new workflow state, and you can see every workflow state and their stories at once which makes it very easy to assess the status of a project and see what features and bugs still need to be completed. It is also easy to filter stories by project or user, tag other users in a story, and link stories together in the order they need to be completed.

Cons

We just us this software internally. It would be cool if we could use this externally with our clients as well, and be able to hide certain workflow states or story comments from them, and/or hide client comments from the devs and let the project manager interface between the devs and clients.

Pros

- I can create a different view for each of my standing weekly meetings, so I can quickly filter to just the items I need to view at the time.
- Labels are flexible and powerful enough to help organize and track varying needs.
- The structure meets differing needs across roles, R&D, Education, Development, QA, Product

Cons

- The software is so flexible that defining the "right" way to use it is very difficult starting off.
- I suppose this is a risk with any software in this space, but there is a danger of losing items if they are excluded from all your standard views. This means that you have to build a view just to look for those lost items. We call them our "Oops" queues.