Welcome to Clubhouse! We’re thrilled that you’re joining the CX team and we’re excited to get to know you.
Every tool has its own language, and the best place to start is with Clubhouse’s, so we’ll be going over some basic terminology and definitions, and then we’ll tackle how everything relates to everything else in more depth later on.
You’re probably already at least somewhat familiar with Clubhouse, maybe you demoed it yourself before you interviewed, or maybe you’ve used other Project Management tools in your past roles.
Some of this might be known to you, but we want to start you off right in using Clubhouse, so we’re going to assume for the sake of this tutorial that you’ve never heard any of these terms before.
One more note before we start: Clubhouse is going through an exciting phase of growth, which means some of the terms we cover in this video might change in the near future. I’ll note those terms and what they might be renamed to when we get to them.
So, first things first: Stories. Stories are the building blocks of Clubhouse. There are three types of Stories: features, bugs, and chores, which are pretty self-explanatory. Stories are where most of the work is done.
Then there are Epics. Epics are a collection of Stories, representing a larger initiative a company is working on. Epics usually have a defined start and end date.
Milestones are a collection of Epics. Milestones are meant to provide a timeline view of a company’s work, and to help them with long-term planning. These also tend to have defined start and end dates.
Projects are groups of Stories organized by a discipline or focus, like frontend, backend, marketing, CX, etc., but they can also represent any open-ended product, component, or initiative. Projects don’t have a defined start or end date, and every Story in Clubhouse must be associated with a Project.
There’s sometimes confusion among our customers about the difference between Epics and Projects, and we’re considering renaming Projects to Focus Areas to try to fix that — we’re not sure yet, so stay posted.
Teams are a collection of Projects that share a workflow. Think divisions in a company: the CX Team has its own process, which differs from the Backend Team’s process, but both of our teams need to be able to do our work in Clubhouse and collaborate. The Teams feature allows us to do that.
This of course begs the question: what’s a workflow? A workflow is the process through which Stories move, from creation to completion. There are three basic workflow state types: Unstarted, Started, and Done. Teams can customize workflow states within those three types.
Lastly, the Organization is the actual space where all the building blocks above live, and where all the work gets done. A Company is the overarching entity that owns the Organization.
Now, I would be shirking my duty if I didn’t note that these terms are probably going to change in the near future. As of this video, we’re preparing to rename Organizations to Workspaces, which is more in line with what other tech tools like Slack and Airtable use for this concept.
With that change, what we now know as Companies will take on the name Organizations. So, to recap: the Organization will be what owns the Workspaces, and Workspaces will be where all of Clubhouse’s building blocks live and where all the work gets done.
Now, if that sounds convoluted to you — please don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time to adjust to those changes and learn the terminology. This is just an intro video to give you a foundation, and now that you know the basics, you’re ready to start building in Clubhouse.