Pivotal Tracker

Score5 out of 10

80 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Pivotal Tracker are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Intuitive and Easy to Use User Interface: Reviewers have consistently praised Pivotal Tracker's user interface, with many stating that it is intuitive and easy to use. Some users have mentioned that they were able to quickly understand how to navigate the platform and create/manage projects efficiently.

Multi-User Assignment for Collaboration: Users highly value the multi-user assignment feature in Pivotal Tracker, as it allows them to assign tasks to multiple team members simultaneously. This functionality has been commended by reviewers for facilitating collaboration among team members and keeping everyone informed of progress.

Exporting Notes into Readable Excel Format: The history tracking and exporting feature in Pivotal Tracker has received praise from users who appreciate being able to easily export notes into a readable Excel format. This functionality helps streamline documentation submission and makes auditing time more efficient.

Reviews

33 Reviews

Decent Ticket Managing system

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

November 20, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have used Pivotal Tracker for user story documentation and tracking. It was a decent tool for documenting bugs, features, and chores, story points, priority as well as assigning them to developers, tracking comments and the story activity in general. It was used in my organization as a Product Management tool.

Pros

Story entry
Story Tracking
Segmenting stories

Cons

Lack of customization and configurability
Lack of UX/UI improvements over 3 years I used it
Outdated UI in general

Likelihood to Recommend

It worked for story documentation and tracking in general. Pivotal Tracker was more useful for developers in my organization for searching tickets. However, it was not as helpful for product and project management, specially due to lack of configurability. I wished there were better ways to sort and filter tickets and create different views.

Verified User

Analyst in Product Management (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Perfect project management tool.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 18, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pivotal tracker tool is Very easy to use and can be used for smaller and medium projects . In pivotal tracker the best is detailed tracking which is really helpful for me when i need to cross verify my work from previous months. Pivotal tracker allows us to keep track of every tasks, add notes anytime and update their status on time. Pivotal tracker is mainly Used for Agile project management.

Pros

It allows us to keep track of every tasks.
Pivotal tracker is very easy to use .
In pivotal tracker you can add the points to a task anytime.

Cons

Pivotal tracker is not a flexible tool.
In pivotal tracker doing Customisation is bit difficult.
In Pivotal tracker there is lack of Configurability.

Likelihood to Recommend

The UI of the Pivotal tracker is really beautiful and amazing, which looks trivial, but we have it open all the time, so it's nice for us. In Pivotal tracker for me its very Easy to create tasks or stories anytime without facing any problems. Pivotal tracker provides us a ton of features to track the tasks and manage a team and the projects. Pivotal tracker allows for a entire team to be on the same page of the tool in regards to where is the project right now, right status of every task, what is being worked on and by whom.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Pivotal Tracker is a steep learning curve but one of the best Software Development tracking tools out there

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 11, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pivotal Tracker is used across the whole organization - maybe minus 2 people - so 8 or so. It helps us track software development work into compartmentalized tickets. Almost every ticket is touched by everyone that uses Pivotal Tracker in some way. I.e. there's a problem we are trying to solve, someone creates a ticket, someone picks up the ticket to start the software development, someone does the software development work, someone checks their work, someone tests their work, someone passes the ticket, someone checks the work of the person who passed the ticket, etc.

Pros

Constant updates - you can always see who touches the project as a whole.
Clean, concise ticket structure.

Cons

It's not user friendly at first. But very powerful once you understand the tools.
It's nice that you can customize your lanes (columns).

Likelihood to Recommend

Medium to small teams - this is a great tool. I'm not sure about large teams because the Project History column would be so filled with information it might be hard to figure out what's going on/what updates have been made. But for Medium-Small teams this is ideal because of the detail laid out in the project history column.

Verified User

Manager in Quality Assurance (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Pivotal Tracker Delivers on Tracking Development Projects

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 13, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Pivotal Tracker to track the development and MIS teams' work and ongoing support of software and infrastructure they have built for the company across about a dozen projects/solutions. These solutions range from infrastructure, eCommerce, internal custom software, and mobile applications. We use it to track features, chores, and bugs for each of these areas. We have from time-to-time exposed it to external vendors for project collaboration and centralized project management of those projects. It is an excellent tool for keeping track of the work and being able to quickly prioritize work, check the status, and re-prioritize tasks based on changing requirements.

Pros

Project task tracking
Visibility of work

Cons

More project management features like Gantt Charts
More reporting

Likelihood to Recommend

Pivotal Tracker is extremely easy to use. New users are able to learn the system and start using it on the same day. I could not manage the number of projects here without this system that gives me a great view of what is happening in each project. Features, chores (maintenance type tasks), and bugs are clearly identified so I can work with Product Owners to prioritize the work according to internal and external customer needs.

Angela Goldsmith, PMP

Director of Systems Development in Information Technology at Dark Horse Comics (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

A Wonderful Tool for Team Project Management!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 13, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pivotal Tracker is used to manage project task flow through utilizing "Pivotal Stories" to track project status, communication, priority level, file sharing, etc. amongst my marketing team! It is used across the pharma marketing department and it solves the issue of task flow management and project tracking.

Pros

Helps keep track of tasks in your queue.
Prioritization.

Cons

Visuals (platform looks a bit cluttered).
Automated task flow (doesn't exist).

Likelihood to Recommend

It is appropriate for those that work in teams with an end goal that involves a multi-step process. It may be less suitable for more independent projects, unless it is used for personal notes/tracking purposes.

Verified User

Project Manager in Customer Service (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Great for software devs teams

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

November 19, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Pivotal Tracker because our head developer preferred it to other project management/dev tools. The most important function is for helping developers to prioritize dev work. Developers don't always prioritize the highest priority items so it worked well to have a project manager owning the roadmap while the devs had a consistent checklist of priorities to work on each sprint.

Pros

In my opinion, it's geared more towards developers and was useful for them to be using a tool they like.
It allows for gauging the estimated time required for each task so that a project manager can correctly weight how much time each task will take.
It's more specialized in its application than a number of other project management software that are for more general project management.

Cons

The UI isn't very appealing. For many, this isn't important but I appreciate using software that is appealing to the eye.
This isn't necessarily a negative, but it isn't a good general project management software, which in my opinion is a strength that they've chose to hone in the focus of their product.

Likelihood to Recommend

Pivotal Tracker is great for software development teams. Approvals are pretty sleek which allows for back and forth between developers and the QA process if there are bugs or the product isn't being built up to specs. It's less useful as a general project management software but they're pretty clear on their website that it is geared towards software development teams.

Brad Henderson

Co-Founder at Droplii (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

Pivotal Tracker gets the job done

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

November 13, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Pivotal Tracker as a list of engineering bugs, tasks, and backlogged items for the engineering team. We eventually moved off of Pivotal Tracker but while using it, it allowed us to prioritize the tasks and bugs logged by our users as well as the product management team. They did so by utilizing the points feature.

Pros

Adding points to a task.
Ease of use, friendly UI.
Identifying/categorizing the type of item created.

Cons

Assigning multiple people to a task would be helpful.
Allowing more of a list feature from a UI standpoint (see: Monday.com).
Connection to GitHub.

Likelihood to Recommend

Pivotal Tracker is best suited for a smaller team (JIRA becomes more necessary as your company scales). It is best for engineering bugs, tasks, and backlogged items for the engineering team. Also good to connect to your Slack channel for team visibility. I also found it helpful that you have flexibility with the sub-sections you can create within Pivotal Tracker.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Software project management made easy with Pivotal Tracker

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 7, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pivotal Tracker is a SaaS project management tool that is used by software development teams and stakeholders to track software projects using an agile methodology. The Ventus Software Development team uses this application extensively to track multiple software projects including but not limited to new features, bugs, chores, epics, and releases. Where Pivotal Tracker really excels is its usability. The layout of the project and the view of the 'stories' within it makes it really easy to organize iterations and have a clear understanding of what everyone is working, what you have to work on, what has been completed, and what has yet to be completed. Where Pivotal Tracker can improve is on the management of stories. It's not impossible, but as often happens on software projects, developers start something and move to other things if they get stuck or need to address something more pressing. I feel that there need to be some controls around starting and 'pausing' stories and clearly identifying that they've been put on pause. Not a big deal. Pivotal Tracker integrates into other applications like Slack, Git, Bugzilla, Usersnap, and a plethora of others.

Pros

Managing multiple software projects using an agile methodology.
Usability of creating and managing 'stories' within the projects.
Lots of integrations into other applications.
Rich reports and analytics to track project progress.
Mobile app makes it very easy to check project status and update it on the go.

Cons

Managing active vs. temporarily inactive tasks/stories.

Likelihood to Recommend

Pivotal Tracker is well suited for companies that manage multiple software projects with onshore and even offshore teams. More specifically, it's appropriate for teams that use an agile or pseudo-agile project methodology. Pivotal Tracker is not so well suited for software projects that follow a waterfall or other form of project methodology.

Juan Palma

Software Development Manager in Engineering at Ventus Wireless (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Keep Your (User) Stories Straight with Pivotal Tracker

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Pivotal Tracker to manage the maintenance and extension of many different web-based applications. Other departments in our organization use Jira for software development project management, while still others (who focus on break/fix and help desk support) use ticket-based systems. Pivotal Tracker is a good fit for our department because we are an agile shop, and the application is intrinsically designed to support agile methodologies.

Pros

Pivotal Tracker makes it relatively easy to manage project team members, including inviting new members, as well as managing existing member roles.
I appreciate how Pivotal Tracker supports the planning and estimation aspects of agile project management, including support for linear and Fibonacci sequence point systems for effort estimation on tasks.
Analytics are just a click away with Pivotal Tracker, making burndown chart spreadsheets and manual tallying a thing of the past.

Cons

While Pivotal Tracker takes a lot of the drudgery out of managing agile-type projects, it can be an "opinionated" product, which can make end-users feel like they have to conform their workflows to the product, rather than the other way around. Automated velocity reporting is one example of this.
Pivotal Tracker has a lot of features, and while this is generally a good thing, it makes the product a challenge to master, for many, regardless of end-user technical abilities.
The visual interface is extremely information-rich, requiring lots of drill-downs and accordion expansions. It would be nice to see a simplified interface for general use, akin to the old-school Scrum board and Post-It notes.

Likelihood to Recommend

Pivotal tracker is a great fit for organizations managing multiple projects as it's straightforward to manage various team members and roles across multiple projects. Setting aside the application's opinionated nature, it's got comprehensive support for agile methodologies baked in, making it a compelling choice for Scrums and other agile approaches.

Pivotal Tracker is probably overkill for colocated single project team environments, as an actual Scrum room with a dedicated physical tasks board may be more cost-effective, and is certainly easier to explain to newcomers.

Benjamin Plotkin

Technical Project Manager in Information Technology at California State University, Northridge (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

A highly capable tool to implement a process

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

August 12, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Pivotal Tracker some months ago when we decided to implement scrum inside the team. I used Pivotal tracker for some time around 2011 and I knew you have to use the "pivotal way" to be able to enjoy the tool. This is the main advantage and also the main flaw of the tool.

Pros

If you're implementing a new process on your team and you like what Pivotal Tracker provides, it works well.
The kanban view is good and compact.
It was not expensive for our use case.

Cons

If you find out that you prefer to work in a different way, the tool starts to fall apart. You have to follow its way of working.
It's not flexible at all. You have some configurations to do, but it is what it is.
The web app feels heavy, it's not simple at all

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have a team that has almost no process and wants to start doing something, Pivotal Tracker may help you with that. You first need to check the process the tool proposes (mostly scrum) and decides if it's what you want or not. If you think it's exactly what you need, start with Pivotal Tracker because it will enforce a lot of things to your sprints.

Willian Molinari

Backend Engineer in Information Technology at Doist (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

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Keep Your (User) Stories Straight with Pivotal Tracker

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 8, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Pivotal Tracker makes it relatively easy to manage project team members, including inviting new members, as well as managing existing member roles.
I appreciate how Pivotal Tracker supports the planning and estimation aspects of agile project management, including support for linear and Fibonacci sequence point systems for effort estimation on tasks.
Analytics are just a click away with Pivotal Tracker, making burndown chart spreadsheets and manual tallying a thing of the past.

Cons

While Pivotal Tracker takes a lot of the drudgery out of managing agile-type projects, it can be an "opinionated" product, which can make end-users feel like they have to conform their workflows to the product, rather than the other way around. Automated velocity reporting is one example of this.
Pivotal Tracker has a lot of features, and while this is generally a good thing, it makes the product a challenge to master, for many, regardless of end-user technical abilities.
The visual interface is extremely information-rich, requiring lots of drill-downs and accordion expansions. It would be nice to see a simplified interface for general use, akin to the old-school Scrum board and Post-It notes.

Likelihood to Recommend

Benjamin Plotkin

Technical Project Manager in Information Technology at California State University, Northridge (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience