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Pivotal Tracker will shut down

pivotaltracker.com

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Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#71

Post by anonymoushn »

kjksf wrote: post #62

Free business idea: clone Pivotal Tracker as a solo dev / small team. People often ask: how do I find business ideas? Well, here you go: many people publicly saying how they love a product that is going away. This is a validated product: people were paying for it. Apparently quite a lot of people. It doesn't get better than this. All you have to do is to clone the product. You can literally market it as a Pivotal Tra…

Given that it's impossible to sign up, it looks like most prospective cloners will have to learn all the features by watching videos and learn about the exported CSV format by asking former customers for their CSVs.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#72

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

pbowyer wrote: post #52
ethbr1 wrote: post #9

Unfortunate. Of all the PM tools I've used, I hated Pivotal the least. It made it easy to do the things that were frequently done. It limited customization down to a sane level. And it generally seemed to stay out of the way (significant look at Jira).

Linear is the one I've settled on, it stays out of my way. For now. Looking at the competition it's only a matter of time before it becomes bloated to justify valuations. https://linear.app/

As soon as the AI features start showing up in Linear, it's time to jump ship. You know for sure VCs are pushing for that in the weekly meeting.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#73

Post by bschmidt1 »

These guys were pioneers who set forth a lot of the patterns used in other PM software (Did they invent "Velocity"?). I hated Pivotal in the early days, but after a couple years on the job I learned to really love it especially as the newer flimsier sprint planning tools were popping up in the early web 2 days.

Only Trello really "beat it" fairly - Jira was always top-down forced, and Asana only won with designers because it was pretty while Pivotal was more tactical (not to mention they clung to skeuomorphic UI a little too long). The rest is history.

I guess we can say Pivotal was quite pivotal in the AGILE/sprint/PM software race. RIP

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#74

Post by aantix »

anonymoushn wrote: post #71
kjksf wrote: post #62

Free business idea: clone Pivotal Tracker as a solo dev / small team. People often ask: how do I find business ideas? Well, here you go: many people publicly saying how they love a product that is going away. This is a validated product: people were paying for it. Apparently quite a lot of people. It doesn't get better than this. All you have to do is to clone the product. You can literally market it as a Pivotal Tra…

Given that it's impossible to sign up, it looks like most prospective cloners will have to learn all the features by watching videos and learn about the exported CSV format by asking former customers for their CSVs.

If anyone is making a clone, feel free to reach out to me. jim.jones1@gmail.com

Previous user of Pivotal Tracker - I'll tell you everything that I loved and hated about it.

I know a couple other devout users as well that I could introduce you to.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#75

Post by kstrauser »

pbowyer wrote: post #52
ethbr1 wrote: post #9

Unfortunate. Of all the PM tools I've used, I hated Pivotal the least. It made it easy to do the things that were frequently done. It limited customization down to a sane level. And it generally seemed to stay out of the way (significant look at Jira).

Linear is the one I've settled on, it stays out of my way. For now. Looking at the competition it's only a matter of time before it becomes bloated to justify valuations. https://linear.app/

A past job used Pivotal for several years until a new employee asked if we'd ever heard of Linear. I think we started the migration maybe a month later.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#76

Post by ericpauley »

anonymoushn wrote: post #71
kjksf wrote: post #62

Free business idea: clone Pivotal Tracker as a solo dev / small team. People often ask: how do I find business ideas? Well, here you go: many people publicly saying how they love a product that is going away. This is a validated product: people were paying for it. Apparently quite a lot of people. It doesn't get better than this. All you have to do is to clone the product. You can literally market it as a Pivotal Tra…

Given that it's impossible to sign up, it looks like most prospective cloners will have to learn all the features by watching videos and learn about the exported CSV format by asking former customers for their CSVs.

Most people probably have a PT account lying around or can find a friend with one. I just checked and my account from 6+ years ago is still active.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#77

Post by Puntergone »

N_A_T_E wrote: post #5
raverbashing wrote: post #4

I remember their (pivotal) culture was very unique. Maybe the developers have tired out of mandatory pairing

I recall the mandatory pairing as quite popular among some devs during that era. I wonder if anyone is actually still working in that manner.

Funny story, I work out of a small part of Accenture and was just today explaining to a client that this is how we work (pairing, TDD, etc.). Way back in 2018 or so we had a partnership with Pivotal and they taught us a bunch of their ways of working. It's been a challenge to maintain, especially through Covid, but a lot of the core ideas and practices are still alive. It doesn't work on every project, but man when it does it's a very nice way to do software.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#78

Post by neilv »

jitl wrote: post #33
neilv wrote: post #25

They're not migrating users to another VMware company product? VMware can't sell Pivotal Tracker to some company that will keep it going longer (and perhaps try to migrate customers to their own product)?

Since VMware sold to Broadcom in 2023, they've been cutting jobs and increasing prices to squeeze every bit of profitability possible out of their remaining customers. I'm actually kind of surprised they aren't offering support past April 30 2025 end-of-life date for 50x the current pricing.

Broadcom is in my bad-vendor list due to the handling of VMware.

Most of my job as a developer now is wading through bureaucracy that other people created (e.g., figuring out a poorly-designed, poorly-implemented, and poorly-communicated third-party API that often would be easier to do myself from scratch).

When I do hold my nose and wade through someone else's bureaucracy, and become dependent upon it, it had better not be pulled out from under me by some coked-up MBA who doesn't care what customers think of them.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#79

Post by kstrauser »

mikehollinger wrote: post #38
pwenzel wrote: post #30

We have to use Jira at my current workplace and it's so complicated. Pivotal Tracker, which I used at previous workplace, was so simple and focused. Sad to hear it's shutting down!

I am fascinated by how complex JIRA is. We evaluated it in 2008. It seemed fine enough. Looking at it 16 years later, and… what is this nonsense? It’s so customizable that it’s loaded with footguns.

I had some thoughts on Jira: https://honeypot.net/2021/10/01/jira-is-a.html

TL;DR it's so completely customizable that it's more like a DIY project management toolkit. Pivotal and Linear have/had a more opinionated approach: "here's how you manage projects. Good luck and have fun!" Jira almost seems to push otherwise rational people to build the most baroque processes imaginable.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#80

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

jeffnappi wrote: post #15
wrl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it, that's new! I tried Linear quite some time ago and it didn't "stick", I'll have to give it another shot. Thanks for the tip!

Linear is the best project management for software I've ever used, highly recommend. They've added many many amazing features this year... Incredible team over there that are just a joy to work with.

Linear is starting to hit against the boundary of enterprise requirements: tracking and compliance where as a product company needs to ship great products. The VC returns is in the former so it will be interesting to see which path they choose.
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