What’s UP with ClickUp?
Let me tell you about my latest crush. ClickUp
Forget about my automatic love affair to anything that includes UP
Do you develop software? Project Manage? Set Goals? Roadmap? Need to organize about anything? Did I cover enough keywords there? I’m about to tell you about the dopest solution I’ve found for these and more.
Wait a minute. I forgot the most important feature. It’s FREE! Forever. There is a premium version that’s $5 a user or you can negotiate with them (way interested in this).
I’ve used a few different programs for project management across different industries. Atlassian dominates with their suite including Jira and Confluence. Even if you use free Trello, they own it. According to datanyze.com Atlassian owns about 32% marketshare which is on the rise. Microsoft Project somehow still owns about 18%. I’m assuming these are your enterprise corporate laggards.
Jira and especially Confluence are great tools that I’ve praised. Following the stock price alone (topping out at about $150 August 2018) you would know Atlassian is “cooking with gasoline“. They’ve got a $31.13B Market Cap to boot. Now how do you stand up to giants like this? Build a bad ass product and make it free. That’s what ClickUp has done.
So why is ClickUp different or for that matter better?
Let’s start with agile/software development. Everything you’re use to and need is there. Tasks/User Stories/Epics/Issues. Add your Scrum points (fibonacci number expressing risk, complexity, effort/time). Time estimates. Who it’s assigned to. You can add custom fields as well as watch topics/tasks for updates. I like the update as you go Confidence status they include on their template for high level tracking.
I mentioned templates. I LOVE their templates. This helped us get up and running fast as well as get ideas. They cover other uses like CRM, building Social/Promo calendars. Roadmapping, Meetings, and more. You can create your own custom templates as well, but I haven’t had a need yet.
Calendars. Building content is essential. Lots of tools out there for organizing your Social posts. The ClickUp templates for this are great. There’s great calendar views for looking at your month/week/day. For social posts the template includes your channel and in general has everything I want.
Roadmapping. Not going to lie, this is something I’ve struggled with organizing. I keep coming back to views, but the Timeline view is great for visualizing. I need to spend more time here, but so far so good.
Now this is something I’m seeing more of recently and it’s about time we get our act together. Meetings. This allows you to build agendas, add attachments, assign “todo’s”. Invitees can collaborate here without the annoying meeting updates. If you have action items or follow up your already in your project management software to move to tasks. For managers the 1×1 template is a great solution and timesaver. There’s a developing market here and this is a great example.
I have already erased a few sentences about integrations so let’s cover it now. We’re a Google/G Suite team. They integrate with Google Drive, Calendar, and Google Chat. This is one of the features that brought me in. Slack and many other common integrations are also offered. I mentioned calendar templates earlier so the Google Calendar integration is rad. We get bot notifs in Chat from our projects now. If you’ve used Atlassian’s HipChat or Slack you are familiar. We dig Google Chat, but that’s a future article. These are all available in the free version.
The Google Chrome extension is a great tool. Now I’ve removed the floating button for now. It always found itself in awful spots in my browser. You can move it or have it not show on certain URLs, but I threw a fit and now it’s gone. That being said, I believe there is still value here. You can add new tasks, create reminders, or even use as your note taker. I found the screenshot tool unique and useful. There’s also Time Tracking.
Speaking of time tracking. This is also something that is on it’s way to mainstream. I’m sure your Project Manager, Producer, Scrum Master has a battle about time estimates. Burn down charts are way useful if you don’t suck. I’ll quote one of my favorite people “forecasts are always wrong”. We’re trying to understand capacity and get better at it. ClickUp has a built in stopwatch you can run when you’re working on a task. BOOM! So with little effort from your team we can get better here. Might seem a little “big brother” or micro managing, but if your intentions are true get over it.
There is a separate feature area for Goals. Seems “OKR’y” to me. That was very rhyme’y. Ok I’ll stop now. Pretty basic breakdown of Goal setting and then creating measurable subgoals. Whether it’s organization or team wide it feels simple and transparent. In general there are a ton of HR applications here. The nicest thing I can say about HR software is that there is much to be desired. Ok fine, it all sucks and is terrible to use.
So let’s wrap up. This replaces your Project Management Software (do they abbreviate that as PMS?). With the Chrome extension it could be your notes repo. Performance tracker as well as other HR uses. It’s awful to migrate to a new platform for any of these. ClickUp has the features, UX, and pricing to make you do it.
#ThatsWhatsUP
