“We are using Pivotal Tracker to manage all of our new web apps under development, this thing rocks.”
“It’s a relief to open Tracker at the start of the day and focus on the next most important task.”
No matter what you’re using for project management, take a close look at Pivotal Tracker. I’ve tried Bugzilla, Trac, Basecamp, FogBugz, Microsoft Project, and Lighthouse—and Tracker is the best for my needs. I’ve shown Tracker to many startups and many have made the switch.
10 reasons I like Tracker.
- It’s free.
- It’s hosted.
- It’s a joy to use. It’s the iPod of project management software. It’s all drag-and-drop and clickity-clack and it just works.
- It’s multi-user. Your co-founder in North Korea can make changes in Tracker and you will see them instantly. No page reloads.
- It’s for lean startups. The building block in Tracker is a story: an increment of customer value that you deliver with minimal waste.
- It’s about completing your next most important task—not maintaining mile-long to-do lists, Gantt charts, and lists of bugs.
- It’s transparent. Everybody on the team knows what everybody else is working on, their priorities, and their accomplishments.
- It’s in sync with reality. It doesn’t take time to keep your requirements and schedule in sync with reality, even if your business priorities change daily.
- It doesn’t do much. No, it doesn’t do dependencies and critical paths. It just keeps you focused on delivering value to customers.
- It’s powerful as hell. Tracker hides a lot of technology under a simple interface. It’s a serious Javascript-intensive web application that’s in the same league as Gmail and Google Maps.
- Bonus reason: Everything is on one page—there’s no need to navigate around (unlike other project management tools). More Gmail, less Hotmail.
If it isn’t clear by now, Tracker isn’t a bug manager posing as project management software.
If you’re already lean, Tracker is a no-brainer. If you’re not lean, Tracker is a good way to start getting lean.
What do other folks say about Tracker?
Read the testimonials from people who are using Tracker. I particularly like this one from Aaron Peckham, the founder of Urban Dictionary:
“I leave Tracker open all day. I use it for documenting, estimating and prioritizing things that need to be done. It’s a relief to open Tracker at the start of the day and focus on the next most important task. It keeps me from getting distracted and having too many things going at the same time. It also serves as documentation of what I’ve completed in the past—to show that I’m making good use of my time.”
Want more opinions? See what people are saying about Pivotal Tracker on Twitter.
What do you think about Tracker?
If you give Tracker a try, please let us know what you think!
# PM Hut · Nov 12, 2008
Haven’t heard about Pivotal Tracker before, and I know a lot of PM tools. They should probably provide a demo account in case someone wants to take a look (a lot of people don’t want to give their information before trying something out).
# dz · Nov 12, 2008
I’ve been using PT for the best part of 4 months now, it’s extremely useful and works great. They recently updated some UI elements and it’s even snappier than before.
I highly recommend it.
# Edward Betts · Nov 12, 2008
One reason not to use: EULA.
# schwally · Nov 24, 2008
Does Pivotal even post a EULA? Trying to find it on their site. Concern about having critical IP info hosted with an unknown entity. What was your concern specifically about the EULA?
# Josh P. · Nov 12, 2008
i couldn’t tell from the marketing — is this a personal productivity tool or a broader project management tool . . . or both?
# Nivi · Nov 12, 2008
It is a project management tool that you could also use for personal productivity if you were so inclined.
# Pelle · Nov 13, 2008
We’ve used it for Agree2 for over a year. For us as a 2 person team in disparate parts of the world it’s perfect.
We have daily skype “stand up” meetings where we use Tracker add new stories and move them around. The changes pop up immediately on the the other users computer.
I’ve also been evangelizing it to various of my clients. Several of which have moved over to it.
The real killer feature of it though is that it automatically calculates how much work it thinks you can do in a week.
This is in particularly great when working with non technical clients. They can move stories around and automatically see the effect on the outcome of the project.
# Andrew Goodrich · Nov 13, 2008
Wow, I’m pretty sure this just changed my life. Definitely beats basecamp for simplicity and practicality.
# Berislav Lopac · Nov 13, 2008
Have you tried http://www.activecollab.com?
# Nivi · Nov 13, 2008
No. It seems like Basecamp on steroids. Is that a fair description?
# adam · Nov 14, 2008
Project management … but online-only?
OK, sure, if I bin the laptop, and never do any work except when sitting in the office or at home. Never do any work on a trip, on a plane, in a hotel, in a cafe, on a train.
Unfortunately, that makes this a “fail” for me, and I suspect a lot of other people. Nice idea, but until internet becomes fully ubiquitous, and AT&T etc stop charging insanely high prices for roaming data, I cannot afford to stop working each time I leave the house :(.
One day, I hope someone will make a free simple library that converts any DB-based web-app into a replicating, distributed, DB-based web-app. And then all these “net connection required” webapps can catch up to software development circa 1995, and start working from *anywhere*. :)
# Erik B. · Nov 14, 2008
I like on that tool:
– easy usage
– fast
– funny
– get nearly 50% more work done since I use it
– it makes you think how effective your work was and how much effective work you’ve done the last days and weeks
I don’t like on that tool:
– online only
– someone else has my PM in his DB without any encription
– with a little effort I can do 95% of that with trac too and trac does not have the same contras
I think I will use it for not critical data and try to work out how I can get trac to do the same for me.
# Anonymous · Nov 16, 2008
Looks like this is only for software dev.
# Nivi · Nov 16, 2008
It is designed for software development but I know people who run their business on it.
# Bruce · Nov 17, 2008
For a more advanced programme and project management solution have a look at e-LM.com.
# John · Nov 23, 2008
I’ve used Pivotal Tracker before. It’s nothing like an iPod. PT does have lots of cool features, but it was slow and had so much javascript going on in the background that it crashed my browser half the time.
# John Philip Green · Dec 3, 2008
We are very extensive users of Lighthouse. (Its got fantastic email integration, and the fact that its so tied in with GitHub is cool too).
This is not a direct replacement of Lighthouse, and would require us to change our daily routines.
Why is pivotal giving this away for free? Do you know if they are going to start charging, once people get locked in?
# Nivi · Dec 3, 2008
Good questions that you should ask Pivotal. =)
I realized another huge benefit of Tracker yesterday. Everything is on one page. No clicking around and navigating like in Lighthouse, Basecamp, Bugzilla, etc.
More Gmail, less Hotmail.
# Nandini · Dec 10, 2008
Interesting, I’ve not used PT. Will definitely try it out. But Deskaway (www.deskaway.com) is what I use currently. I work with various remote teams, people with multiple skill sets and varying complexities. With Deskaway, managing all these projects / accounts seems easy. Their UI is simple, user friendly – does not confuse you – I used basecamp and thought that it was rather complex and my challenge was to get all people I work with to use Basecamp… but with Deskaway, its intuitive nature made it rather easy for everyone to get onto this PM tool.
# Mike · Dec 22, 2008
I started using Pivotal Tracker, and think it has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it is intuitive, has an easy interface, and is free. I certainly have not found another project management software out there for free!
On the minus side is that you can not set Precedents or Dependents. I planned to use PT for the launch of a website, and all of the technical and business areas around this launch. Without the use of precedents, how can my team know when a task needs to be taken care of (as it relates to the other tasks that the group must do)?
Any suggestions?
# Nivi · Dec 22, 2008
Put the precedents higher on the list. Put the dependents lower on the list.
Also, try to break dependencies as much as possible. Dependencies lead to inventory. Inventory is waste.