If your engineering team lives in Slack, moves quickly, and hates overhead, you already understand the world IFTTT operates in. Their platform powers automations for millions of people, which means their engineering decisions need to be fast, accurate, and grounded in real context. But when you’re fully remote, context is fragile. Conversations happen in Slack, decisions get made in seconds, and without a dependable system of record, important details can disappear just as quickly as they appear.

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“They were using Jira prior to my arrival and then switched over to Shortcut,” says Chris Altman, VP of Engineering. “Jira was overly complex, especially for a small business. Every time I've seen Jira work, somebody had to have a full-time job managing it.”

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The team needed something lighter and easier to keep current. They landed on Shortcut.

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Using Stories, Slack, and real-time context together

When IFTTT switched to Shortcut, the team set it up to match the way they already worked. They run two product squads, one Scrum and one Kanban, and both use Shortcut as their day-to-day operating layer.

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They keep meetings intentionally minimal, so Stories became the source of truth for what’s happening across the teams.

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“We’re a very meeting-light organization, so having the Stories reflect the state of the work has been really helpful in keeping everybody aligned,” Chris says.

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Custom Fields help track discipline areas like backend, frontend, and infrastructure. Shortcut stays out of the way, giving the team a clear view of what’s happening without adding extra process.

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One of the biggest unlocks has been Shortcut’s Slack integration.

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“Most of our conversations happen in Slack,” Chris explains. “But the context wasn’t always making it into Shortcut. Linking Slack threads to Stories was a game changer.”

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Now engineers can:

• Create Stories directly from Slack threads
• Connect discussions as they happen
• Assign work right inside Slack

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“Being able to just ‘create a Shortcut Story from Slack’ is immensely helpful,” Chris adds. 

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This shift gave the team a single place where work and context come together.

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Automation, built into the workflow

As an automation company, IFTTT quickly built an integration that connected Shortcut to the tools they rely on every day. With a few IFTTT Applets wired up, routine updates began running automatically.

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Shortcut activity now triggers actions across their stack:

• Completed Stories generate AI-drafted release notes or social copy
• Updates are routed into Slack for quick visibility
• Marketing sees what’s shipping without interrupting engineers

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“When a Story is completed, we send it through our AI to decide if it belongs in a changelog or could be turned into a social post,” Chris says. “It’s really helpful for giving non-technical people visibility into technical work.” 

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For a remote team, these small automations add up to more time building and fewer interruptions.

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Building in a way that matches the team

“With Shortcut it doesn’t seem to require that full-time management overhead. It’s great for a small team, and we use it for all of our engineering efforts,” Chris says.

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Today, IFTTT uses Shortcut as the steady layer beneath their workflows, keeping work connected, conversations captured, and the whole team on the same page.

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