Item: ClickUp
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

ClickUp has been implemented organization-wide. My department uses ClickUp to manage all of our day-to-day work and projects. Within our department, we are divided into five smaller teams. ClickUp allows us to do housework for each sub-team in a folder, then group all the folders together for our whole team. We use custom views to see the size of our overall backlog and progress across teams. We also collaborate with external teams who house their work in other ClickUp spaces. Being able to share tasks across spaces is very handy for us. That way, each user can manage their work in one place. A major plus of using ClickUp is transparency into what is being worked on, how impacted a person or a department is, and how a project is progressing.

Pros and Cons

Organize day-to-day work so that nothing is missed, thanks to start/end dates, prioritization flags, reminders, checklists, and recurring tasks with advanced conditions.
Automation with advanced rules so that tasks can flow to the right person at the right time and nothing slips through the cracks.
Views that allow all of the work I want to see to be grouped together no matter what folder or list or another department the task is in because the filters and conditions allow for great detail.
Collaborate on files using annotations on videos, PDFs, and graphics. That way, we can make sure not to miss any edits and deliver a final product that's just what the requester had in mind.

Use cases for some of the more advanced views that I never use, such as mind maps. I have yet to find a practical use for some of those really cool-looking features.
The Home page is not the most useful to me. I find myself using custom views to see what's happening with my day because of the filters and choices for view types. If the Home page allowed filters and for me to group my work more meaningfully, then I would use it.
The Dashboards area could use more features. For example, allow me to hide dashboards that others in the organization have shared that are irrelevant to me. The latency with report widgets loading is also frustrating.

Return on Investment

Our daily standup meetings used to be 20 minutes, but because we put ClickUp on screen and what's left to do in the sprint is so openly visible, we usually go through it in about 7-8 minutes.
Our biweekly sprint planning sessions used to take almost a half day. Now that everyone has access to the sprint lists, they put all of their tasks in there ahead of time. We use the custom filtered views to find anything that might fall within the dates and is missing from the sprint. Then we use the time mainly to prioritize and groom. It's usually only about 2 hours for our group of 10 people.
The native time tracking feature in tasks has been powerful in helping us gauge the level of effort in real numbers. We now have tangible evidence that allows us to push back when we get requests for amounts of work that are unreasonable. We can point to our numbers to negotiate and set realistic timelines.

Collaboration

We enjoy using the ClickUp whiteboard view in our sprints to do our Agile retrospective. Sometimes people are shy about vocalizing how they felt things went or where they would like to see improvements. So having the board there, where everyone can add notes in real-time, has opened up the conversation within our team. Beyond our team, we're able to collaborate with other departments using tasks shared across spaces. Even if a task is part of another department's list, we can share it on our own list and put it in our sprints. This allows us to take into consideration work from beyond our own area so that we can be realistic when we do sprint planning.

All-in-One Productivity Platform

Prior to ClickUp, each person on our team managed their own to-do list in a different way. Some used Excel, others kept checklists in Word, and others mainly worked out of email. These methods are all inconsistent for a manager who wants to take a look at the overall workload of all their subordinates and compare productivity. Also there is no transparency into each other's work so it's unclear who has extra bandwidth and who needs a hand. Centralizing all of our work in ClickUp not only helps with transparency, it also helps with making sure nothing is missed. For example, if person A is emailed a request, and then later person B is asked for a status update, then they would be completely caught off guard. However, if the request is input directly to ClickUp using a request form, all persons on the team have access to know the status and report on it when asked. We also no longer need to use a shared calendar in Outlook. The Outlook calendar was very messy to look at. ClickUp calendars can be rendered in various layouts and filtered to view specific types of tasks. It's much more efficient for us.

Alternatives Considered

Prior to switching to CickUp, our department was using Asana to its full extent. We used Asana for about one year and enjoyed it. When the organization saw how well using Asana was going for our team, they were interested in an organization-wide implementation. During the research discovery phase for this, other vendors had to be evaluated, too, including ClickUp. We found that ClickUp does everything Asana does and much, much more, plus it was considerably more affordable. At the end of the day, the decision was an easy one to make.

Key Insights

Do you think ClickUp delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with ClickUp's feature set?

Yes

Did ClickUp live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of ClickUp go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy ClickUp again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office 2016 (discontinued), Adobe PhotoShop

Likelihood to Recommend

ClickUp is useful for managing day-to-day work and larger projects. For example, if there are recurring tasks that must be done daily, weekly, monthly, etc., then set recurring tasks and make templates. For all the little steps, make checklists within tasks. For example, if you have to write social media posts each month and schedule them, use ClickUp to create a calendar to track when each post is going out. Make a recurring task to write the posts and include a task template with all the steps, such as writing, proofreading, editing, legal sign-off, art creation, and management approval. For tasks assigned to another person, like an editor, a reviewer, and an approver, set up another task that will automatically assign to that person, or multiple people, once your task is complete. If your team receives a lot of requests from external departments, centralize the requests using a ClickUp form. With the size of our team, fielding requests via email is not the best experience. For something one person is handling, this leads to email chains in the inboxes of 10 people. Or sometimes, an email request might only be sent to one person, and if it slips through the cracks by that one person or if they are out of the office unexpectedly, then that request could be missed. It's much better to use a form. That way, all requests are in one place (not scattered across different inboxes, chat, and phone calls). We have the form submittals automatically assigned to two people. They field the requests and then assign them if we accept the work. If the requester asks anyone on the team how their ask is going, there's no need to feel caught off guard because anyone can look in ClickUp and provide a status update.

Loving this ClickUp! A real upgrade to how our team works!

Overall Satisfaction with ClickUp