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Pivotal Tracker. It's opinionated, but because it can rely on those assumptions, it strikes this incredible balance between information density, on-the-ground u

by btown 8y ago

Pivotal Tracker. It's opinionated, but because it can rely on those assumptions, it strikes this incredible balance between information density, on-the-ground usability, and the ability to have a birds-eye-view of the risks of a software project. A diligently updated Pivotal project is a thing of beauty and confidence and inspiration. One size does not fit all (and certainly, if you want to give your team the opportunity to work on more difficult-to-spec, research-oriented, or experimentation-dependent projects, it's far from ideal), but for typical web applications, it's industry-defining. Worst-designed software: Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions - https://www.google.com/search?q=peoplesoft+campus+solutions&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=peoplesoft+campus+solutions&... . A case study in "how many workflows can we fit into one infinitely customizable software product without hiring a UX or UI designer to give any thought to a single one of them? Oh, and how can we make it as non-performant as possible to do the most common tasks?" I understand the siren call of "an interface that works for every workflow imaginable" - but unless you build design-customization tools on top of it, it will be a hated monstrosity. Fun story: my undergraduate college used this, and I got a highly competitive internship after an interview where I spent the majority of the time ripping apart exactly how bad this software was, and how I would fix various aspects. I imagine no person motivated enough to solve those problems has any desire to work for Oracle, so the problem will persist for at least another century.

m90 8y ago
Pivotal Tracker is so incredibly good, it's a shame it's kind of niche (compared to Jira). When Jira gives you the mightiest of tools to postpone and reconsider everything into oblivion by discussing and custom-workflowing it in epic Cinemascope, Pivotal Tracker will give you just that little amount of space for collecting what you need, and then get things shipped. It may be weird, but a company using Pivotal Tracker has a big +100 from my side when looking for a job.
pp19dd 8y ago
Nailed it for worst category. Roughly a decade ago when we 'computerized' student orientation program signups, I was in a meeting on collecting payments through that system. There were about a dozen programs new students could sign up for (kayaking trip, etc) and the prices varied from $50 to $5,000. Since these weren't classes and students hadn't started yet, these couldn't be made into classes or there'd be problems with transcripts, GPA computations, having to creatively edit academic programs and so on. Best proposed solution by people intimately familiar with the system was to have students purchase fake parking spots which were price-equated to match a workable unit to cover the wide range in prices. In other words, choosing to build with Habitat for Humanity was one parking spot, and trip to Ecuador was 100 parking spots. To enforce class size limits, they proposed to make one virtual parking lot per program and assign their number of available parking spots accordingly. We didn't do it that way.

by btown 8y ago

m90 8y ago

Pivotal Tracker is so incredibly good, it's a shame it's kind of niche (compared to Jira). When Jira gives you the mightiest of tools to postpone and reconsider everything into oblivion by discussing and custom-workflowing it in epic Cinemascope, Pivotal Tracker will give you just that little amount of space for collecting what you need, and then get things shipped. It may be weird, but a company using Pivotal Tracker has a big +100 from my side when looking for a job.

pp19dd 8y ago

Nailed it for worst category. Roughly a decade ago when we 'computerized' student orientation program signups, I was in a meeting on collecting payments through that system. There were about a dozen programs new students could sign up for (kayaking trip, etc) and the prices varied from $50 to $5,000. Since these weren't classes and students hadn't started yet, these couldn't be made into classes or there'd be problems with transcripts, GPA computations, having to creatively edit academic programs and so on. Best proposed solution by people intimately familiar with the system was to have students purchase fake parking spots which were price-equated to match a workable unit to cover the wide range in prices. In other words, choosing to build with Habitat for Humanity was one parking spot, and trip to Ecuador was 100 parking spots. To enforce class size limits, they proposed to make one virtual parking lot per program and assign their number of available parking spots accordingly. We didn't do it that way.