Lessons Learned from 5 years using Pivotal Tracker
simplermachines.com
simplermachines.com
That being said, I really like the fact that Tracker encourages you do not get bogged down on small details and overplanning like other planning tools.
As a former Pivot (RIP 2019) I'm always glad to see some of our in-house tool get showcased :)
Okay.
> One of the insidious things about Tracker (and a lot of Extreme Programming practices) is that it can lure you into thinking that substitutes for customer feedback are just as good as the real thing. "The feature's finished, I clicked 'deliver' and the PM accepted it." Nope. The feature isn't done until you hear back from a customer about it.
So, if Tracker can't track stories though their whole lifecycle, why not use a different tool that can?
The answer is that for institutionalised Pivots such as the author, there is an identity between Pivotal Tracker and correct process. So, if you want to follow a shitty process, don't use Tracker, but if you're following a good process, Tracker must be the right tool. Even though it still can't do this very basic essential thing.
That said, i strongly agree with almost all the practical advice in this piece! Perhaps not surprising, given that i'm a partially deprogrammed ex-Pivot.
Oh, except:
> Delete your icebox
I've never heard an argument for this that made any sense at all to me. I suspect this is just another manifestation of deletionism vs inclusionism, and as such, there is no explanation for either belief that is intelligible to someone who does not already believe it.
I found myself in a monthly meeting of 12 or so (Unnamed FANG) managers where they would curate a collection of 3,000-5,000 bugs / issues / feature requests.
It was almost entirely the same collection of old, stale bullshit that no one was ever going to work on.
The meeting started with recently added items, and those were usually digested within minutes.
The rest of the old items were just waste.
This meeting sometimes took a full day. It took enormous amounts of time and energy to review and re-review and debate and re-debate, and with every new contributor, all the old discussions had to be repeated for many of these items.
100% of this effort was waste.
In contrast, our team carried zero open defects. We agreed to either fix or honestly reject defects immediately. We experienced none of this waste and on the handful of occasions where we inappropriately rejected an important defect, it became clear very quickly and we fixed it.
Put the things you want to do someday in some other tool.
The icebox is cancer.
But the problem wasn't the icebox, it's a culture which allows twelve managers to sit in a room for a whole day completely wasting their time.
Resonated with me a lot. I've been working on a high-value ticket for 2 weeks now and close to cracking it. But it feels bad because I've "only" worked on 1 ticket while my co-workers have been burning through smaller tickets with 1-2 line code changes... makes me feel bad and anxious to be honest that I'm not doing enough work