Transitioning to Teams: FAQs

I'm already using some other method for organizing by Team in Shortcut. Why should I transition to Teams?

We designed our new "Teams" feature to be the default and most powerful way to organize work by Team in Shortcut.

"Teams" contains all of the functionality that exists with your current methods, plus more. You won't lose the ability to associate Stories to Teams, report-on Team performance, and view work by Team throughout Shortcut But you'll gain the ability to:

  • Assign Epics to a Team
  • Assign Iterations to a Team
  • View a Team's Roadmap
  • Quickly find work relevant to your Team
  • Organize Users into Teams
  • Assign Stories to Teams across Workflows

More importantly, Teams is a foundational element of Shortcut that will continue to improve over time. Here are some areas we're exploring to make Teams more robust:

  • A Team-to-Workflow relationship so you can customize your Team's process
  • A Team-to-Objective relationship so you can easily view the big picture across Teams
  • Advanced filter and view settings so you can quickly focus-in on your Team's work
  • Saved views or Spaces per Team so you can standardize your Team members are on the same page

How do I transition to Teams?

To transition to Teams, you can use our Bulk Edit functionality, which is accessible from the Stories page and other detail pages.

For example, if you are using Projects for Teams, you can do one of the following:

  • Navigate to Projects Page > Select all Stories > Bulk edit to update Team

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  • Navigate to Stories page > Filter on a specific Project from the sidebar > Select all Stories across all Workflow states > Bulk edit to update Team

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To transfer existing Epics and Iterations, you can select the appropriate Team field from the Epic and Iteration detail pages. As you continue to create new Stories, Epics and Iterations, we recommend assigning these to the appropriate Team.

Once your work is transitioned to Teams, you can begin viewing, filtering, and reporting-on this work by Team throughout Shortcut.

 

We are using Projects to model our Teams today. What should we use Projects for now?

Projects is a legacy feature that we will be sunset in the near future. We recommend using Custom Fields to represent key dimensions that may exist within Teams.

To transition from Projects to Teams, first setup your teams and link your teams to the corresponding workflow e.g. Mobile Team <> Engineering Workflow. To add another dimension of organization to your Team's work, utilize Custom Fields (basic or advanced) e.g. apply Product Area Custom Field to differentiate "Onboarding" and "Navigation" Stories within the Mobile Team.

 

Do I need to transition to Teams right away?

No. Teams is currently an optional field, so we are not forcing an immediate transition, but we highly recommend it!

We understand change does not happen overnight; your current method for organizing by Team in Shortcut may be ingrained within your organization. The "Teams" feature will be most powerful when all Teams are using it, so we recommend getting your organization onboard first.

We also acknowledge that the "Teams" feature may be missing key functionality that is prohibiting your organization from transitioning. For example, if you are using "Workflows" for Teams today, a Team-to-Workflow relationship may be necessary. If you are using "Projects" for Teams today, you may not transition until the "Projects" feature can be disabled. Our upcoming roadmap is focused on fixing these gaps to ensure all organizations can utilize Teams.

 

How should I manage my Teams in Shortcut?

We recommend creating Teams in Shortcut based on the primary way your organization groups its people and work. A Team is a group of people that collaborate on work towards to a common objective. Teams often have a roadmap, KPIs, iterations, ownership over specific features, or common rituals such as stand-ups and retros.

 For many companies, these Teams are "cross-functional Teams", commonly known as "squads" or "pods". Within these cross-functional Teams, you may have members from multiple functional areas, such as Engineering, Product, and Design. In these cases, we recommend creating your Shortcut Teams for the cross-functional Teams, rather than the functional area.

For other companies, Teams may be more functional, with engineers organizing around technical components or services, independent of Product and Design. In these cases, your Teams should be organized around these functional units.

We designed our Teams feature to be flexible enough for different organizational setups, yet structured enough to provide value for all.

 

Do Teams have an association to a Workflow in Shortcut?

Yes, Teams can now be assigned Workflows and vice-versa. There is a many-to-many relationship between Teams and Workflows so a Team can belong to several Workflows and a Workflow can belong to several Teams.

If you have already created a Team, then you can configure the Workflows associated to them by navigating to the individual Team page and selecting the Workflows dropdown menu on the right-hand sidebar. Otherwise, you can assign Workflows to a Team upon initial creation.

When creating a Story, selecting a Team will filter the Workflows to only those that are assigned to that specific Team.

 

How should I set up my Workflows across Teams?

A Workflow is a series of States that a Team uses to track work to completion. Most often, Teams use a single Shortcut Workflow for their work, though Teams may use multiple Workflows for more advanced use cases. Workflows are often shared across Teams, but can also be unique to a given Team and their process.

We recommend starting with singular Product Development Workflow for all Teams to follow. However, if a Team wants to follow a different process, additional Workflows should be created. Oftentimes, a development team may require a unique series of States for their work. And of course, Teams outside of R&D (such as "Marketing" or "Operations") use vastly different processes, and therefore, should have separate Workflows.

Teams may also choose to use multiple Workflows if they want to track a different stages of the development process. For example, you can use "Design" and/or "Product Grooming" Workflow to track work before it moves into the development process.

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