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This is a community initiative with no affiliation to Pivotal, Broadcom, or VMware. All projects, references and opinions shared here are for informational purposes only and should not be taken as endorsements or guarantees by any of these parties.
Note:
This is a community initiative with no affiliation to Pivotal, Broadcom or VMware. All projects, references and opinions shared here are for informational purposes only and should not be taken as endorsements or guarantees by any of these parties.
Farewell Pivotal Tracker - Welcome Trackers!
Sign up to receive the latest info on launches and new projects!
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Many people expressed their sadness and love for Pivotal Tracker when the shutdown was announced. Today, as we get closer to the sunset date, we want to remember what made it unique and provide an overview of the projects carrying Tracker's legacy forward. It's exciting to witness more than 10 teams from across the globe working to achieve this goal in a condensed time frame. We invite you to follow along and thank Tracker and everyone who worked on it over the years!
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What is a Project Tracker?
Calling Tracker a project management tool doesn't do it justice. It was great because it deliberately said NO to features that were detrimental to dev teams' productivity and flow. Instead, it focused on developer productivity and happiness while automating everything possible. Let's call this category "project trackers" to differentiate it from bug trackers (huge databases optimized for ingestion from untrusted sources, filtering, sorting, and triage) and general project management tools (software built for non-technical project managers and executives focusing on status insights and top-down planning).
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Everyone is on the Same Page
A project tracker is where developers and PMs "live" and feel at home. You don't get lost in complex filter presets or need mental overhead to understand the context of the project setup and workflows. Collaborators can switch projects and immediately know where they are and what state the project is in because there is a shared set of base views everyone knows. Only the minimum amount of custom settings and baked-in best practices are required to make the right things easy and the wrong way harder, thus preventing projects from drifting.
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Auto Planning
Cycles are a natural product of the planning process and not something that needs to be manually created, consuming time and effort. Instead, cycles are planned and updated automatically as circumstances evolve, allowing teams to predict when they will reach milestones more accurately. A project tracker removes the pressure placed on developers to answer when something will be done or if a new feature can fit into a sprint. Everyone can see what can be reached by when and discuss if descoping is needed to meet ‘necessary’ deadlines. You do not plan the cycles; the core planning activity is prioritizing the work to be done.
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Lanes as the Main UI
Lanes are the key UI element and are a logical level above the story state. Lanes preserve a story's relative position/priority as it transitions through its states of completion, reducing mental overhead by simply making it easier to find a story. The last thing you want to do is manually move stories to a new swimlane for every change e.g. from "finished" to "in-review" - this is too prone to human error/forgetfulness.
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Fast
A project tracker never slows down your flow or makes you feel like you are waiting for a server. This includes seamless keyboard shortcuts and a UI that can stay ahead of your typing speed.
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Information Density
In their collapsed state, stories have a high enough information density for a viewer to get an immediate overview of the status of the project over the next few weeks. Big cards with a Trello-like layout do not fit this requirement. Also, stories should not look and feel like you are working in a spreadsheet or require you to switch between different/customized view modes, thus losing the quality of feeling you have when you know the team is on the same page and seeing the same information.
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Real-time Collaboration
Changes made by team members are instantly reflected for everyone to see, enabling seamless collaboration. This includes story updates, comments, and prioritization changes, creating a truly shared workspace.
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Stories Open in Context
Story details can be viewed and edited right in the project context without opening as a full screen view on top of everything else.
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Saying no to toxic planning practices
A project tracker says NO to Gantt charts and discourages arbitrary deadlines unless it is essential for a team to prioritize their work better.
Meet the Projects...
Join a community of builders, pivotal alumni and enthusiast users
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BARD Tracker
- Website: bardtracker.com
- Status:closed beta
- Notes:rails
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cm42
- Website: cm42
- Status: live (started 2011)
- Notes: rails, AGPL-3.0
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lanesPM
- Website: lanes.pm
- Status: closed alpha
- Notes: local first / offline support
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litetracker
- Website: litetracker.com
- Status: closed beta
- Notes: rails
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story time
- Website: storytime.team
- Status: closed alpha
- Notes: phoenix
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planisphere
- Website: planisphere.dev
- Status: open beta
- Notes: phoenix
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Not Published yet:
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kempt
- Website: kempt.dev
- Status: unknown
- Notes:
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tracker boot
- Website: trackerboot.com
- Status: closed beta, planned opening more in april
- Notes:
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pivotalreplacement
- Website: pivotalreplacement.com
- Status: pre alpha, limited launch planned for april
- Notes:
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velocity tracker
- Website: app.velocitytracker.co
- Status: internal alpha
- Notes:
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