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Pivotal Tracker will shut down

pivotaltracker.com

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Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#151

Post by skybrian »

latchkey wrote: post #86
skybrian wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were doing “velocity” at a startup using a rack of index cards. Software is not strictly necessary when everyone is in the same room.

PT's concept of velocity isn't just tracking a number. It is tracking what work will get done within a period of time based on the average amount of work done previously. It allowed PM's to actually estimate when a feature would be completed and how adding or removing stories (or people!) would impact future feature deadlines. Initial velocity was meaningless and only developed over time as an average value of a team…

Yes, that’s basically how we did it. Though not formally accounting for vacation days; there were four of us and we didn’t have people coming and going much. We only did it once a week during the retrospective. It’s not hard to add up story points for the week and remember what you did in previous weeks. You could enter it into a spreadsheet if you want to get fancy.

The concept comes from Extreme Programming. Software implementations came later. I think Pivotal Tracker does something useful, but you need a larger team for it to matter.

Here are some photographs of the team room:

https://williampietri.com/writing/2004/teamroom/

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#152

Post by Dansvidania »

latchkey wrote: post #83

RIP PT. I can't tell you how much this piece of software changed my life. Working at Pivotal (the very early days of Cloud Foundry), taught me so much about how to develop software and products. It taught me how to work closely with people (pair programming for the win!). How to iterate and pay attention to velocity. How to write stories. How to polish a turd over time. I use these skills every single day. You will b…

I heard this from other people that worked on Pivotal. Must have been a cool eng team.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#153

Post by hinkley »

teeray wrote: post #112
aantix wrote: post #47

The thing that I always liked about Pivotal is that it was visibly obvious that there was only one queue. It forced everyone to ruthlessly prioritize and make the hard decisions. In this moment, do you want me working on this bug, or this new feature? You have to decide - you get one or the other. It avoided the "Everything is a high priority" dilemma.

I also loved that it was adamant about having specific, defined states with no customization. The issue is todo, in progress, done, delivered, accepted… that’s it. Custom issue states are a special kind of hell in JIRA.

That fucking state machine page makes me want to shoot someone.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#154

Post by acdha »

teeray wrote: post #112
aantix wrote: post #47

The thing that I always liked about Pivotal is that it was visibly obvious that there was only one queue. It forced everyone to ruthlessly prioritize and make the hard decisions. In this moment, do you want me working on this bug, or this new feature? You have to decide - you get one or the other. It avoided the "Everything is a high priority" dilemma.

I also loved that it was adamant about having specific, defined states with no customization. The issue is todo, in progress, done, delivered, accepted… that’s it. Custom issue states are a special kind of hell in JIRA.

Yes - 100% of the people I saw be annoyed after switching to GitHub projects were the people whose projects were perennially late but also had a roughly 1:1 ratio of PM overhead rituals to actual work. I’ve come to think of it like giving a toddler TikTok – there’s a certain type of person who cannot resist thinking that one more workflow state / custom field will be the secret trick for productivity.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#155

Post by hinkley »

shagie wrote: post #138
teeray wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also loved that it was adamant about having specific, defined states with no customization. The issue is todo, in progress, done, delivered, accepted… that’s it. Custom issue states are a special kind of hell in JIRA.

> Custom issue states are a special kind of hell in JIRA. The nth circle of hell looks like a Jira workflow. https://i.imgur.com/dQE9vWn.png and https://medium.com/@daitcheson/you-can-do-better-than-jira-1...

Your honor, he needed killin’.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#156

Post by hinkley »

dangus wrote: post #127
aantix wrote: post #47

The thing that I always liked about Pivotal is that it was visibly obvious that there was only one queue. It forced everyone to ruthlessly prioritize and make the hard decisions. In this moment, do you want me working on this bug, or this new feature? You have to decide - you get one or the other. It avoided the "Everything is a high priority" dilemma.

That sounds more like a disastrous missing feature to me. A good productivity tool doesn’t dictate how teams work. I’d rather have a tool that’s more customizable.

I hear that the dirty secret of Salesforce is that it’s easier to change your company processes to match Salesforce defaults than to change Salesforce to match your company process.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#157

Post by hinkley »

aantix wrote: post #134
dangus wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like a disastrous missing feature to me. A good productivity tool doesn’t dictate how teams work. I’d rather have a tool that’s more customizable.

I hear Jira is the ultimate in flexibility and widely beloved. ;)

That’s a paddlin’.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#158

Post by hinkley »

aantix wrote: post #67
semperos wrote: post #61

Shortcut ( https://www.shortcut.com/ ) is a solid alternative to Pivotal Tracker. I work as an Engineering Manager there and helped build an importer for Pivotal Tracker data into Shortcut ( https://github.com/useshortcut/api-cookbook/tree/main/pivota... ). Shortcut as a product is team-oriented with solid GitHub/Gitlab/Bitbucket and Slack integrations.

Still feels like too many columns, too many states. Pivotal Tracker - ice box, backlog, or current iteration. I see companies in Trello Hell - well meaning, but often conflated, grey area states. There's like 10-15 columns on their boards. It's a hot mess.

I worked on a tool more crowded than this and of late I’m coming around to the idea that these tools are all built for management which is why they get deployed. These drag and drop views aren’t that helpful for engineers. And they just make it easy for someone else to accidentally fuck up the status on your tasks.

The task list in Jira is good enough for finishing or marking one task as blocked and starting another. If anyone is using the interface like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, dragging things around at pace, it’s because people aren’t keeping their tasks updated and a tool can’t and probably shouldn’t try to fix that. You fix that by orienting the UI so devs benefit from using it, not by guilt tripping or lecturing.

Re: Pivotal Tracker will shut down

#160

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

ethbr1 wrote: post #142
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it takes the pressure off, then go ahead and add those features. But carve it in immutable, legal stone that there will always be a classic (reddit style: old) version of the product that's feature-complete but maintained. ... my suspicion is there's actually legalese somewhere that mandates the continuity of old.reddit.com. Otherwise, I'm at a loss to explain its continued existence in light of aggressive app pus…

That's true. They are maybe the only major player who went with that approach. I wonder if their users are that vocal?
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