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ethbr1

Unfortunate. Of all the PM tools I've used, I hated Pivotal the least.

It made it easy to do the things that were frequently done.

It limited customization down to a sane level.

And it generally seemed to stay out of the way (significant look at Jira).

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Linear is the one I've settled on, it stays out of my way.

For now. Looking at the competition it's only a matter of time before it becomes bloated to justify valuations.

https://linear.app/

We've been on Linear for a couple years now and like it a lot.

As soon as the AI features start showing up in Linear, it's time to jump ship. You know for sure VCs are pushing for that in the weekly meeting.

If it takes the pressure off, then go ahead and add those features.

But carve it in immutable, legal stone that there will always be a classic (reddit style: old) version of the product that's feature-complete but maintained.

... my suspicion is there's actually legalese somewhere that mandates the continuity of old.reddit.com. Otherwise, I'm at a loss to explain its continued existence in light of aggressive app pushing.

That's true. They are maybe the only major player who went with that approach. I wonder if their users are that vocal?

it's been there for about a year. you can use plain text to search issues, and the slack bot will auto-create titles when you create issues from there.

Linear founder here.

We look at AI as capability similar to any other technology. Instead of jumping on the AI bandwagon or thinking AI is a feature, we look if there is opportunity to reduce friction or help the user well in the workflow they are doing. Today like the AI can inform if there is duplicate issues being reported or improve the titles you submit from Slack conversion.

A past job used Pivotal for several years until a new employee asked if we'd ever heard of Linear. I think we started the migration maybe a month later.

> bloated

This is like Excel - nobody needs more than 20% of all its features... but a different 20% for everyone. Project Management/Tracking needs can vary a lot between orgs or even people.

That's not really true: witness Jira boards which are really kanban boards replicated everywhere. Jira, by now, is mostly a database of issues with a terrible management interface that's only accessed through the "boards" features.

At least in the "agile" (actual or lookalike) software development.

Agreed, and I suspect part of what made it great is that it was being ignored. I love all the dubious new features it doesn't have, and the complex larger platform offering it isn't a part of.

I agree. I have been on Pivotal Tracker for over a decade. Still am. Tried Jira and a few others, usually feeling like they are too taxing on the management part.

What are alternatives that are light on the customization and day-to-day management?

end of an era

linear.app seems ok

+1 for linear.app. It's somewhat similar in feel to PT. It's very responsive and has vim style key bindings. We switched a year ago and haven't looked back.

I’ve been using Github Projects. It’s not as advanced and complex as Jira though, but its simplicity and closeness to code and documentation is a blessing for my hyperactive geek brain

The problem with Github projects is that they don't seem to have a super focused direction. They're trying things and then shutting them down after two years: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/39106

I do like conceptually the idea of issue tracking living tightly coupled with the codebase, but unfortunately Github can't seem to get it quite right yet.

Thanks for the context.

Ah, I didn’t know/notice any of that, probably because my use case is the absolute minimum:

A project, a few columns, tickets and an assignee field is all I’m using.

I understand most use cases are more complex than mine though.

Yeah I think making PM software is ultimately a trap. You either keep use cases super skinny and make one camp happy, or you decide that you slowly need more customers and end up like Jira. I feel like every PM software is on the spectrum of ending up like Jira, it’s just how far along that journey they are that dictates whether they are interesting to software engineers or not.

I help build Shortcut (https://www.shortcut.com/) and I think it fits the bill of light—but not spartan—on customization and day-to-day management.

To set up a new Shortcut workspace:

1. Sign up 2. Invite teammates, group them into teams if desired 3. Activate the GitHub/Gitlab/Bitbucket integration, so as engineers work via VCS their work in Shortcut progresses automatically 4. Set your workspace's timezone 5. Turn on/off Iterations (sprints) based on your process. Unfinished stories can be set to automatically roll from one iteration to the next. 6. Turn on/off point estimation based on your process

Then start writing Stories (tickets/issues) to track work.

Going further: Stories can be grouped into Epics. Epics can be grouped into Objectives (with associated Key Results if that's your thing). You can put Epics on a Roadmap to "share out" what your team is planning to work on. All optional, based on how you work and the size of your org.

Agreed, as an ex-pivot I really liked PT (relative to Jira et al.)

It was clear the VMWare was going to gut the company, and Broadcom only made that clearer.

It was once a great company... (Pivotal Labs)

Now it's toast.

I have never understood the VMWare/Pivotal thing, to the point where I assumed there must be two different companies named that for VMWare to have bought a company called Pivotal.

It was a different company until 2019. And they were doing great stuff, but it all went down after the acquisition.

Pivotal Labs was acquired by EMC back in the day. They bundled it with some cloud foundry work and created Pivotal. When Dell acquired EMC they also acquired a big share of Pivotal. Dell then decided to squeeze more blood from the VMWare stone and forced them to acquire Pivotal before selling the whole thing off to Broadcom.

We found https://www.shortcut.com less opinionated than Linear and a closer 1 for 1 to Pivotal. They're all getting a little bloated, wish one would dial it back vs keep adding (which feels like the inevitable future for Linear).

Out of curiousity, what do you dislike about spreadsheets/google docs? This has been my primary means of tracking progress historically. I've tended to find that all other mechanisms just add unecessary overhead.

Not the person to whom you're responding, but:

Collaborative/online spreadsheets can work. Carefully designed, with appropriate field constraints and filters and sort templates... especially for smaller lists or smaller groups, they can be OK.

A few areas where they break down though:

  - No attachments to stories (test cases, screenshots, etc)
  - No comments/history view or threaded discussions
  - Poor usability of notifications on @mention
  - Inflexible UI/data formatting (cells instead of layout)

I'll often start a project using a spreadsheet, because one big advantage is that you can edit several "stories" at once. So it's a good rough draft. Inevitably, the missing features become more important and I move the data over to a more appropriate tool.

Sometimes I keep the spreadsheet for internal stakeholder issue reporting. It's a business-familiar tool for gathering input, which then gets synced to the more purpose-built tool for action.

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