Capsule is a modern CRM built for small to medium-sized businesses, from solo founders just getting started to fast-growing teams scaling their first sales process. As part of Zestia, Capsule expanded its product suite with the acquisition of Transpond, an email marketing platform. Today, they operate three cross-functional delivery teams focused on product growth, new features, and deeper integration across the marketing suite.
As the product team grew, so did the need for more structure. With different tools for different tasks — from Trello boards to spreadsheets and Docs — it became harder to stay aligned and prioritize. The team realized they needed a more unified system to support scale without slowing them down.
That’s when they found Shortcut.
“We’ve totally reworked the way our teams operate.”
Anna Dick, CTO at Capsule, set out to bring structure and better visibility into how the product teams worked. To support that, she introduced a project management tool built for teams like theirs, giving them one place to align and manage the entire product development process.
When Shortcut was recommended to her, it stood out immediately. “I was able to get developers in quickly, and they were like, this is really cool. It was so easy to set up and demonstrate value right away.”
Making work visible and manageable
Shortcut became the Capsule team’s centralized hub for all product planning and development. With shared two-week iteration cycles, Story points, and velocity tracking, the team gained a clearer understanding of their pace and workload.
“There was a lot of change happening, but we couldn't always explain why. Now we can. We know when work is impacted by urgent issues or shifting priorities, and we can communicate that clearly.”
Turning strategy into action
Capsule also uses Shortcut Objectives to connect high-level goals to the work happening day to day. Company-wide themes roll down into Epics and Stories, making strategy visible and actionable across the product organization.
“The Objectives view was key for me. We can zoom out to see what we want to achieve this quarter and zoom in to the specific Epics that support that. It’s made planning and communication so much easier.”
A better tool for the way they already work
Capsule integrates Shortcut with GitHub and Slack to support their existing workflows. Requests that come in from Slack can quickly become Stories, and GitHub activity provides context for engineering progress.
“It works with how we already operate. And the integrations just work, there’s no heavy lifting.”
The team also appreciated how intuitive Shortcut was for new users. Setup was fast, and adoption was easy.
“We didn’t have to spend time getting people up to speed. It’s straightforward, and it just makes sense.”
The impact of Shortcut at Capsule
Since moving to Shortcut, Capsule has:
- Centralized all product planning and development in one platform
- Used Objectives to connect the dots between strategy to execution
- Improved capacity planning with Story points and velocity tracking
- Integrated Slack and GitHub to support existing workflows
“We’ve brought real structure to the way we work, and we can actually demonstrate it. That’s been really powerful.”
