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Pivotal Tracker is a versatile project management tool that has found a wide range of use cases across various departments and …
Overview
What is Pivotal Tracker?
Pivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.” The solution is now owned and supported…
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What is Pivotal Tracker?
Pivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.” The solution is now owned and supported by VMware, and is part of the…
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Product Details
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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Pivotal Tracker?
Pivotal Tracker is an agile project management program primarily for software developers. The software organizes projects into “stories,” the goal being to maintain momentum within and between “sprints” of a project within an agile development style. Pivotal Tracker is built to support the Agile development cycle from the ground up, enabling mid-project analysis and feedback based on current progress and development speeds. It also provides a shared priority system so everyone on a given project has visibility on progress and team members’ statuses. It also includes file sharing, project obstacle visibility, and a REST API for customizable integrations.
Pivotal Tracker Competitors
- Jira Software
- Asana
- Rally Software (formerly CA Agile Central)
Pivotal Tracker Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Pivotal Tracker is a project management program primarily for software developers. It is built from the ground up to facilitate the agile development cycle, and is optimized for structuring projects in sprints, or “stories.”
The solution is now owned and supported by VMware, and is part of the Pivotal / Tanzu product line up.
Jira Software and Asana are common alternatives for Pivotal Tracker.
Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.
The most common users of Pivotal Tracker are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
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- Recommendations
Pivotal Tracker is a versatile project management tool that has found a wide range of use cases across various departments and organizations. Moffitt's Collaborative Data Services Core, for example, uses Pivotal Tracker to form realistic expectations about work completion based on the team's ongoing performance. Other departments at Moffitt employ this tool for bug tracking and as a shared team-level 'to-do' list. The graphics and technology department utilizes Pivotal Tracker to track their work tasks and ensure that no items are dropped or missed. Moreover, the support service team is exploring the expansion of Pivotal Tracker's usage to track additional client work.
In addition to its adoption within Moffitt, Pivotal Tracker is also utilized by agencies and software development teams to manage various projects. It facilitates the implementation of agile methodologies, such as scrum, and effectively manages backlogs and feature roadmaps. Integration with other applications like Slack, Git, Bugzilla, and Usersnap further enhance its functionality. By utilizing Pivotal Tracker, engineers, product managers, testers, and marketing teams collaborate seamlessly. The tool allows for task prioritization, backlog maintenance, progress tracking, and facilitates file sharing among marketing teams. Overall, Pivotal Tracker serves as an invaluable asset in project management for organizations of diverse sizes and industries.
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.
In-Story Task Management: Some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the in-story task management capabilities of Pivotal Tracker, stating that it is a weak point. They believe that the functionality could be greatly improved by adding features such as the ability to mention other users in tasks and mark tasks as 'in-progress'.
Lack of Epic Spanning and Parent-Child Story Relationship: Many reviewers have raised concerns about the fact that epics do not span projects in Pivotal Tracker, particularly when scaling agile methodology to multiple teams. This limitation also leads to confusion due to the lack of a concept of a 'parent' story with child stories that have split off from it.
Limited Customization Options for Categorization: Users desire more flexibility in categorizing stories beyond the default sections like backlog, ice box, and my work. They wish for the ability to create custom categories for better organization and classification of their stories.
Users commonly recommend the following for Pivotal Tracker:
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Users should take advantage of the free trial to ensure that it meets the organization's needs before making a purchasing decision. This allows them to fully explore the features and capabilities of the software and determine if it aligns with their project management requirements.
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It is recommended to utilize tools and tutorials provided by Pivotal Tracker to learn the software effectively. The platform offers resources such as user guides and documentation, which help users understand how to navigate the interface, set up projects, assign tasks, and track progress.
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Many users find Pivotal Tracker useful for managing complicated tasks with multiple people involved. The platform offers features that facilitate collaboration and coordination among team members, such as task assignment, progress tracking, and communication channels. This ensures that everyone stays on the same page and contributes effectively to project success.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 31)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 18, 2022
Perfect project management tool.
March 11, 2020
Pivotal Tracker is a steep learning curve but one of the best Software Development tracking tools out there
Jira is very user friendly. It's ideal for people new to the software development lifecycle and the tracking of the work. They have simply nailed the intuitiveness. Pivotal Tracker might be the better long-term tool because of the flexibility that comes with it. But as mentioned, the learning curve is very steep for Pivotal Tracker.
February 13, 2020
Pivotal Tracker Delivers on Tracking Development Projects
I have used a number of systems like Pivotal Tracker over the last 15 years. I have had several occasions to use Wrike separate from and alongside Pivotal Tracker. Wrike was more difficult to use and seems to either be locked down by permissions, so I had to "fight" to do my job, or wide open. Pivotal Tracker is easy to give the "Goldielocks" amount of permissions so people can just do their jobs, me included.
February 13, 2020
A Wonderful Tool for Team Project Management!
- Salesforce.com, TripActions, Slack, Google Drive, Skype for Business (formerly Lync), Zoom, Adobe Acrobat DC, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Expensify and ADP Workforce Now
The only thing that PT compares to is Salesforce and we now utilize both platforms - Salesforce is a bit more organized in its automated task flow and allows us to connect our other platforms to it for efficient data transfer and data consistency.
November 19, 2019
Great for software devs teams
I haven't used dev-specific tools other than Pivotal Tracker but it's useful because it is built for a specific use case. The simplicity of an Asana or Trello is great and they have their advantages, but the additional functionality mentioned was worthwhile and a compelling enough reason for us to use Pivotal Tracker.
November 13, 2019
Pivotal Tracker gets the job done
It's not necessarily a matter of better vs. worse when it comes to all of these different tools. They all serve a different purpose to different sized teams. I found Pivotal Tracker and monday.com to be a matter of preference while serving a similar purpose. Good for smaller teams. monday.com definitely allows for more flexibility with layout. JIRA is a must once you scale. Trello is good for self-management for 2-3 person teams.
November 07, 2019
Software project management made easy with Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker keeps users 'close' to the software project(s) by allowing users to understand, in plain words, the tasks and expectations of each software release, whereas other tools are either way too close to the source code or require an extensive amount of maintenance. Pivotal Tracker makes it easy to create 'stories' about the features, bugs, or chores that need to be done using language that anyone (developers, pm's, stakeholders, etc.) can understand but allows developers to tie into their code via integrations that facilitate 'marrying' the stories into the code directly, which is something that you can't easily find in other tools.
October 08, 2019
Keep Your (User) Stories Straight with Pivotal Tracker
JIRA allows teams to tailor the application workflow to meet their needs, while "opinionated" Pivotal Tracker enforces a consistent workflow approach on all team members. While I, personally, may prefer to have a system configured to my particular habits and desires as a technical project manager, our department experiences a regular turnover in both development staff and product customers (as is expected in a higher education software shop that relies on student assistant developers). Therefore, Pivotal Tracker's "one true way" is the better option to ensure consistency and quality across our various projects.
August 12, 2019
A highly capable tool to implement a process
We selected Pivotal Tracker because it is highly opinionated about the process. It worked quite well for what we were expecting from it. Other software we tried were much more flexible, so we could implement our own process there.
February 13, 2019
Pivotal Tracker: Does what it says on the tin and so much more
Pivotal Tracker, Asana and Trello all have free versions making them ideal for smaller companies to try out. All of them blast Kannan boards and issue tracking capabilities. While Trello and Asana are great products in themselves, Pivotal Tracker edges them out with its wealth of features including trackability of epics, burndowns, better reporting, and analytics. JIRA, on the other hand, is way more customizable, has more reporting capabilities and more features than Pivotal Tracker but is more expensive too. At the end of the day, it comes down to what you're looking for in an agile project management tool as well as how much you're willing to pay for it.
August 03, 2018
The Best in Agile Project Management
I've used JIRA ages ago, and it was still a young product in its initial iterations. The UI was a clunky and was missing a lot of ease with drag and drop for individual stories, uploads, etc. Management of users was useable, but not as ideal as it could be.
We selected Pivotal Tracker because of its simple, elegant workflow. This is the ideal; it's where we want to be. So we continue to improve, and as we get better, we get more out of the software.
The other software products we evaluated were too complex, and we found that allowing us to design our own workflow was not a good idea. That allowed us to get comfortable and engrain our bad habits. We like that Pivotal Tracker forces us to be better.
May 17, 2018
Great for tracking sprints and being organised
March 15, 2018
Pivotal Tracker; Simple to use fantastic to see
We have had employees in the past look at Drupal, and other open source project management tools to assist in our needs. Unfortunately each solution took too much time to implement, design and configure that we could not stop the work we were doing for clients to complete a full set up of a project tracker. Thankfully Pivotal is a predefined solution with no configuration needed. Simply input your projects, design your Stories with Tasks and begin your tracking.
January 17, 2018
Fun Scrum Software
We were using JIRA and found it lacking in their UI and some of their services, especially communication. PT communicates much easier with simple links to tasks for execution and QA review.
Basecamp is just really a super note taking and asset depot. I would not consider true software for scrum and agile development.
Basecamp is just really a super note taking and asset depot. I would not consider true software for scrum and agile development.
December 14, 2017
A streamlined approach to task management with Pivotal Tracker
Compared to other task management tools, Pivotal Tracker has the best blend of functionality and cost. When you need something simpler than JIRA, and not solely focused on code or UI related tasks like BugHerd, and have a more direct approach to completing tasks than Trello - I would recommend Pivotal Tracker.
December 14, 2017
An intuitive and powerful task planner for software development
Pivotal Tracker, for better or worse, provides a more structured and rigid workflow than most. That makes it easy to get started, but if you have your own workflow you want to integrate into it, it could mean it'll take longer to get used to or customize. It's still more customizable than BugHerd, though. Trello and Clubhouse offer more of a card-based Kanban-style view, and seem to offer more customization options to create your own workflow, but at the expense of actually having to define and customize that workflow rather than just using the system out of the box.
Our team has evaluated Basecamp, Trello, and others but overall preferred the simple and flexible layout of Pivotal Tracker.
June 07, 2017
A great solution that has been around for a while.
- Trello and LeanKit
Our organization actually does not exclusively use Pivotal. We also have teams on solutions like Trello and LeanKit. It's all preference, those who buy into all the agile features that pivotal provides, love it. Those who do not need all the overhead, simply use a different solution as their primary work log. However, every team still has a pivotal tracker as we use it as our primary system of record for audit history.
December 13, 2016
A tool that encourages good development practices
I used to be a huge JIRA fan, until I realized how much time I was spending fixing complicated custom workflows and statuses. I spend almost no time administering Pivotal Tracking. And it turns out, those complicated, custom workflows weren't helping us anyway.
August 17, 2016
Medium startup using Pivotal Tracker
Overall I have found that I prefer using Pivotal over all the competitors I've tried. There are certain aspects of the other products which I do like but as a whole Pivotal does a better job. My one request is that I feel it is very much a web app and the other products have more solid mobile applications. Pivotal has sold me as my primary option due to its web portal but I would love to see a better mobile application.
August 11, 2016
The ease of using Pivotal Tracker
- JIRA and rally
Rally is too complicated - there are far too many fields that all have the same meaning. It's a better agile tool in my opinion since it it was designed purely as an agile tool, but since the CA technologies acquisition, the tool has become more complicated and there are far too many features. Pivotal is great for startups and smaller companies whereas Rally I feel would be better fit for larger more rigid organizations like AIG.
August 05, 2016
Really flexible but maybe overkill
- Trello and CA Agile Central (formerly Rally)
Compared to Rally the tool seems more accessible because or the suite of apps available. It also feels more polished and stable than Rally. It definitely has more tools and features but again it can be overkill for a smaller team or project.
August 03, 2016
Pivotal Tracker — a great agile tool.
I have also used Trello and JIRA. A small company with only a couple of projects may be best suited with Trello due to its cost and simplicity, whereas JIRA may be better suited for a large company that can afford a dedicated JIRA manager, due to its complex configurations and integrations. Pivotal Tracker was perfect for us (a company of 30 - 50 people).
July 29, 2016
Pivotal Tracker Review
- JIRA Software and Asana