Pivotal Tracker is a great Agile tool!
January 05, 2016
Pivotal Tracker is a great Agile tool!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is being used to manage software development projects for our clients. We manage web, mobile, and special projects in Pivotal Tracker. The problems that this addresses is where are we in the development process. If you are following an agile process you still need to be able to report metrics to your senior management and your clients on where you are in the process. We use Pivotal to track user stories (features) and bugs and also scope of work.
- Extremely easy to pick up. I have used many different traditional and agile systems and this was the easiest to pick up by the teams I have used it with.
- Tagging structure is great. Rather than strict hierarchies, Pivotal Tracker allows your teams to create a group of tags and use multiple tags with one story or bug.
- Powerful searching. Pivotal Tracker's search is definitely a huge strength. It allows you to search by date, words, authors, owners, and tags.
- Visual Design. This is directly related to the first item but it bears breaking it out as a separate item. This is a well thought out application.
- If you are looking for configurability, this application would not excel there. You can add users and tags.
- As a web application, you are at the mercy of your Internet provider.
- There are no built-in or user-created workflows. You have to assign items to the next person yourself.
- I have worked on many, many projects in my lifetime where the tool used to manage the project becomes an impediment to the project. The increased efficiency of the teams that have used and embraced Pivotal Tracker is astounding. Stuff gets done and the tool shows progress without getting in the way.
- As part of a functioning agile process, it is incredibly easy to be flexible with what value you are delivering when.
- We delivered a product that in waterfall was predicted at 9.25 months in a little over six.
Pivotal Tracker is the easiest to use of all of these tools. We embraced the simplicity and ease of this tool over all of the others.
Rally Software Development looks old but is very powerful. VersionOne looks incredibly good and is very powerful. Both are extremely expensive. They are very configurable and have great reporting. Both need at least a part-time administrator.
JIRA is extremely configurable either with or without Greenhopper (now part of JIRA). JIRA is still really a bug tracking tool that has appended a decent agile framework to it. You can probably make JIRA look or do pretty much anything. I have never seen a place that did not end up with a JIRA administrator to manage the implementation. If you desire configurability and defined workflows, this is a more inexpensive product than Rally or VersionOne.
Anyone who tells you you can manage an agile software development project with Microsoft Project does not understand agile. If your PMO still believes that the PMBOK is the be-all of project management, this is the best tool you can use.
Rally Software Development looks old but is very powerful. VersionOne looks incredibly good and is very powerful. Both are extremely expensive. They are very configurable and have great reporting. Both need at least a part-time administrator.
JIRA is extremely configurable either with or without Greenhopper (now part of JIRA). JIRA is still really a bug tracking tool that has appended a decent agile framework to it. You can probably make JIRA look or do pretty much anything. I have never seen a place that did not end up with a JIRA administrator to manage the implementation. If you desire configurability and defined workflows, this is a more inexpensive product than Rally or VersionOne.
Anyone who tells you you can manage an agile software development project with Microsoft Project does not understand agile. If your PMO still believes that the PMBOK is the be-all of project management, this is the best tool you can use.
Using Pivotal Tracker
15 - Software engineer, QA, UX, Visual Design
Ability to enter email addresses.
- Defining Success Criteria. This allows QA and engineering to know when you are done.
- Managing Client Expectations
- Visibility of where the project is.
- User Experience is using this to track their status.