The perfect tool for software projects using Kanban

Clubhouse helps us manage agile software projects better than ever before. With other tools it feels like we are forcing it to try to accommodate our workflow, but with Clubhouse it feels like it was designed exactly for our use.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Shortcut (previously Clubhouse) has been a great improvement for us.

Overall our experience has been great. Less has been falling through the cracks, and we're able to actively manage & prioritize our development with ease. The application is enjoyed by both the development team & the management team, so everyone is benefitting from our switch to Shortcut.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Great Product

Fantastic, it's very straight forward and easy to use within a small dev team (about 30)

Pros

It's non-invasive product that can be used in many different development processing styles, we have used it from Scrum, to KanBan to ShapeUp

Cons

Tasks/Ideas can easily get lost due to poor organization of shortcut

While Clubhouse can do some things well, it is lacking in many areas

My experience with Clubhouse was not great to say the least. While the UI is promising, and the price per user is much lower than others, you get what you pay for. Like too many other project management apps, there is not enough focus on the time being tracked vs a budget for the project you are working on. The project layers overlap in a way that would be good if you were working on individual projects for a larger product, but not if you are working on individual projects geared towards individual clients.

Pros

I think the best part of Clubhouse is the robust API that can allow a dev team to add or complement to the existing platform. Clubhouse seems designed for teams focusing on a product or a small portfolio of similar products or complimentary features. It does not seem designed for a consulting or agency style development shop.

Cons

Clubhouse is lacking in a number of areas that should be expected features in agile project management software. Completion dates are buried, no project budgeting or hourly rates, no invoicing or adding expenses, time tracking, resource management, personal task lists, custom fields, dependencies. It also seemed overwhelming to get set up and running.

Previously Clubhouse, Shortcut really did cut our processes shorter.

Pros

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!

Cons

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.