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That's when open-sourcing vs. closing it down (if that were to happen) would be fantastic. (cf. one HN discussion from today about that) If Pivotal Tracker wer

That's when open-sourcing vs. closing it down (if that were to happen) would be fantastic. (cf. one HN discussion from today about that) If Pivotal Tracker were to disappear, that would be quite the disaster for a lot of people.

Drbble 15y ago
Only people who run their business on a random startup webapp. I wish amazon or Google would externalities their pro quality trackers, though.
- AndyKelley 15y ago
  Having just quit Amazon and knowing firsthand the disaster that was project tracking, this comment amuses me. There is no "pro quality tracker" at Amazon.
  - rsanheim 15y ago
    There is no such thing as a 'pro quality' tracker. They ALL suck, in different ways, and simply try to minimize their deficiencies based on the context they were developed in. You find the one that fits your world view and your work flow, and put up with the annoyances and oddities, or try to paper over them with hacks and service hooks.
  - Drbble 15y ago
    Amazon had tools, but not every team used them. I loved the tool Haakon wrote. And there was actually a great third party open source tool back in 2009, whose name I forget, that was bizarre abandoned. It's not like Pivotal sets a high bar. It doesn't even have a notion of progress, and it has that ridiculous multi column layout so you can't easily use a screen to look at a task. And it runs on a random startup webserver that can be turned off at any moment.
jes5199 15y ago
I use Tracker and find it to be a major pain. It's close enough to the tool that I actually need that it's useful, but then it gets opinionated and makes certain things impossible. For example: "chores" skip the verification state. So I don't use them anymore. and the fact that "stories" can't actually track their own prerequisites, it's really to accidentally lose your sequencing information
- apinstein 15y ago
  We switched from tracker to Planbox about 6 months ago and have been thrilled. Same general model as tracker with better execution. It's a young product so there are still some issues but it's clearly heading in the right direction. They also have an import from tracker so it's painless to try out.
  - orblivion 15y ago
    I'm annoyed by Pivotal's interface too, but the intro video from Planbox didn't really impress me much (maybe because I work at a really small company and that level of hierarchy and customization probably isn't relevant to us.) Do you have any particular examples of what it does better than Pivotal?
    - apinstein 15y ago
      I came to loathe the columnar setup of Pivotal. I found myself constantly rearranging the interface just to be able to work. We have a lot of project and subprojects here, and Planbox's hierarchy (there is basically one more level than in Tracker) is really useful. Their UX for slicing and dicing based on person, label, project, etc is also nice. The search is faster (it's all client side so it's practically instant). The charts make more sense to me. It doesn't treat stories as a unit of work; rather they are a goal. Thus all of the tasks in Planbox can be individually assigned to different people and estimated and time-tracked at that same level of granularity. Overall I just found that there were a lot of things I was hacking around in Pivotal, and frankly I didn't even notice it. It's only when we hired a couple of people and they pointed out frustrations with Pivotal that I started looking around. When I started using Planbox, that's when I really realized how much I was adjusting myself to the limitations of Pivotal. I find myself much less stressed managing things via Planbox. Hope that helps!

Drbble 15y ago

Only people who run their business on a random startup webapp. I wish amazon or Google would externalities their pro quality trackers, though.

AndyKelley 15y ago
Having just quit Amazon and knowing firsthand the disaster that was project tracking, this comment amuses me. There is no "pro quality tracker" at Amazon.
- rsanheim 15y ago
  There is no such thing as a 'pro quality' tracker. They ALL suck, in different ways, and simply try to minimize their deficiencies based on the context they were developed in. You find the one that fits your world view and your work flow, and put up with the annoyances and oddities, or try to paper over them with hacks and service hooks.
- Drbble 15y ago
  Amazon had tools, but not every team used them. I loved the tool Haakon wrote. And there was actually a great third party open source tool back in 2009, whose name I forget, that was bizarre abandoned. It's not like Pivotal sets a high bar. It doesn't even have a notion of progress, and it has that ridiculous multi column layout so you can't easily use a screen to look at a task. And it runs on a random startup webserver that can be turned off at any moment.

jes5199 15y ago

I use Tracker and find it to be a major pain. It's close enough to the tool that I actually need that it's useful, but then it gets opinionated and makes certain things impossible. For example: "chores" skip the verification state. So I don't use them anymore. and the fact that "stories" can't actually track their own prerequisites, it's really to accidentally lose your sequencing information

apinstein 15y ago
We switched from tracker to Planbox about 6 months ago and have been thrilled. Same general model as tracker with better execution. It's a young product so there are still some issues but it's clearly heading in the right direction. They also have an import from tracker so it's painless to try out.
- orblivion 15y ago
  I'm annoyed by Pivotal's interface too, but the intro video from Planbox didn't really impress me much (maybe because I work at a really small company and that level of hierarchy and customization probably isn't relevant to us.) Do you have any particular examples of what it does better than Pivotal?
  - apinstein 15y ago
    I came to loathe the columnar setup of Pivotal. I found myself constantly rearranging the interface just to be able to work. We have a lot of project and subprojects here, and Planbox's hierarchy (there is basically one more level than in Tracker) is really useful. Their UX for slicing and dicing based on person, label, project, etc is also nice. The search is faster (it's all client side so it's practically instant). The charts make more sense to me. It doesn't treat stories as a unit of work; rather they are a goal. Thus all of the tasks in Planbox can be individually assigned to different people and estimated and time-tracked at that same level of granularity. Overall I just found that there were a lot of things I was hacking around in Pivotal, and frankly I didn't even notice it. It's only when we hired a couple of people and they pointed out frustrations with Pivotal that I started looking around. When I started using Planbox, that's when I really realized how much I was adjusting myself to the limitations of Pivotal. I find myself much less stressed managing things via Planbox. Hope that helps!