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INTRO TO TRACKER
A simple, story-based project planning tool that allows teams to collaborate and react instantly to real-world changes.
JOANNE WEBB Head of QA + Customer Support [email protected]
BRIEF OVERVIEW
THE TRACKER DIFFERENCE
WORKING WITH TRACKER
WHAT’S NEXT
FOR MORE …
WELCOME TO TRACKER
BRIEF OVERVIEW
Enables collaboration for software teams
Predicts the future based on past progress
Gives a birds-eye view of the project to everyone
Was built to support the Pivotal development process
Works best with and fosters…
Teams with collective ownership
A highly involved product owner and continuous feedback loop
TRACKER …
Software development consultancy, across US and in the UK and Canada
Hundreds of clients/projects, from startups to enterprise
Technology and vertical agnostic, it’s about the “how”
Our agile practice focuses on test-driven development, pair programming, short development cycles, also continuous verification and integration of code
PIVOTAL LABS
Tracker supports our client engagements, where we co-develop software, using techniques such as pair programming and test driven development
Who uses Tracker at Labs?
Each team has a PM, design, dev, and QA
All of our clients, including Twitter, Best Buy, Zendesk, and many more. Typically, clients continue to use Tracker after the engagement.
Why does Tracker work the way that it works?
Tailored to support our agile workflow. We do XP but it supports Scrum and other methodologies.
PIVOTAL LABS & TRACKER
THE TRACKER DIFFERENCE
EASY, INTUITIVE, TRANSFORMATIVE…
“Easy to use, great story management, Super usability experience, just Awesome!”
“I introduced Tracker to my new employer 3 years ago. It has changed the way we work.”
“Tracker has transformed the way we do development projects, it's the first and last app we look at daily, invaluable.”
“It's so much a part of my routine that I hardly even think about it anymore”
Tracker quickly & easily facilitates good Agile practices:
BECAUSE…
Breaking a large project and it’s features down into manageable steps to complete it
Effective iteration / sprint planning
Team estimation
Allowing focus on completing the next priority in the list
Seeing progress & the big picture
Isn’t a replacement for conversations
WORKING WITH TRACKER
TRACKER: The Project Page
1. Provides a birds-eye view of project
2. Is a prioritized list of work (stories)
3. Groups list of work (backlog) into segments of calendar time (iterations)
4. Predicts progress based on historical performance (velocity)
5. Fosters a simple process, continuous feedback loop
AT ITS CORE, TRACKER … VELOCITY
ITERATIONS
PRIORITIZEDSTORIES
STORY TYPES
A feature story describes work that results in direct value to the team’s customer
A bug story represents a defect, that may be related to a feature story
A chore has indirect value to the customer (e.g., Update SSL Certs) and has a simple workflow
A release story is a milestone marker
ESTIMATINGA point is a team-specific metric representing the effort it will take to implement a feature (considering risk)
Features are estimated via a fixed point scale:
Powers of 2 – 1, 2, 4, 8
Linear – 1, 2, 3
Fibonacci – 1, 2, 3, 5, 8
Custom
Bugs and Chores aren’t typically estimated (and it’s best not to)
PRIORITY 20
PRIORITY 1PRIORITY 1
PRIORITY 12
PRIORITIZATIONPosition in backlog is priority
Stories are ordered by business value weighed against development risk
Consider dependencies when prioritizing
It's obvious which item the team will work on next
Use One big list (combine current and backlog)
VELOCITY + ITERATIONS
Accepted stories in current automatically move into Done at end of each iteration
Velocity calculated based on average # of points accepted in recent iterations
Future iterations are projected based on current velocity
Velocity can be overridden locally for “what if” scenarios
Iteration length & team strength can be adjusted for unusual situations - goal is steady velocity (low volatility)
Back-date stories that were accepted “late”... maintains velocity calculation. However, historical data, i.e. the original accepted on date is maintained in Analytics.
VELOCITYVELOCITY ITERATION NUMBER TEAM STRENGTH
ITERATIONLENGTH
OVERRIDE
MANUAL PLANNING
Turn off Automatic Planning on the Project Settings page to control stories in the current iteration; the only stories that will appear there, are any that:
are in-progress you’ve accepted since the start of the iteration you’ve explicitly drag dropped there
Note: Turning off automatic planning only affects the current iteration; you’ll still see future iterations in the Backlog, calculated based on the project's velocity.
RELEASE MARKERSRepresent milestones in the backlog, such as planned releases
Stories for the milestone are above it
Optional target dates, release marker turns red if they won’t hit it (too much scope)
Helps avoid scope creep because impact on milestones is immediate
Progress toward release can be visualized with a Burndown chart
STORY WORKFLOW
1. Customer / PM / PO prioritizes stories in backlog
2. Team discusses and collectively estimates each story
3. Developers start next available story in current or backlog
4. Developers check in code to finish story
5. Team pushes code for new feature to demo/test environment, and delivers stories
6. Customer/PM accepts or rejects story (the feedback loop)
ESTIMATE
TE
ST
FIN
ISH
DELIVER
PRIORITIZE
RE
LEA
SE
DEPLOY
START
DEFINE
DESIGN
TE
ST
REJECT
ACCEPT
How does Labs use Tracker?
DESIGN IN THE FLOW
Makes upcoming design work (in multiple projects) visible
Can be prioritized, discussed and estimated
Can thrash out a lot of detail and decisions before it goes into main project to be brought to life
Dedicated design project
DESIGN IN THE FLOW
Add overall themes and mocks to an Epic
Attach images, assists, Google docs, links to InVision and more
Use labels to call out design specific items, e.g. "needs design", "pair with designer", "design accept"
@mention designer in a comment for help/clarifications
Moving to a project for implementation
LABELSHighlight key information
Click on a label to see all stories with that label, or use search
Labels can be applied in bulk
Can be used to group related stories or for workflow
You can tie stories together, effectively, by having them in an epic or giving them all the same label
Must-have Labels:
• blocked
• needs discussion
• needs design
EPICSRepresent coarse-grained features or feature themes
Order independent of stories in backlog, convey overall big picture priorities
Linked to stories via label
Progress bars show story progress and relative size
Sharing and collaboration around requirements and design assets that span multiple stories
WORKSPACESWork with panels from different projects in one view
Can set color for each
Add any number of projects
Drag stories between projects
Search across projects in workspace
My Work across projects
Shows stories you are working on (as story owner) or delivered stories you’ve requested (as the customer)
Order is based on priority of stories in backlog
WORKSPACES CONTINUED
ADD/REMOVEPROJECTS INWORKSPACE
SEARCH ACROSS PROJECTS
SELECTABLEPROJECT COLOR
SORT
MULTIPLE STORY OWNERSKeep track of who's pairing or working on stories by adding multiple story owners.
Makes My Work more accurate
For now, it's limited to three, for your dev pair and perhaps a tester or designer
SEARCHFull text search with support for wildcards/regex, negatives, boolean expressions
Search by specific fields (state, owner/requester, dates)
Relative dates (“today”, “-2weeks”), with date ranges (“-1w..today”)
Searches can be pinned, saved and shared
Cross-project search in Workspaces
AnalyticsMultiple charts, reports and filtering options
See key metrics
Drill down into individual epics
Raw data can be exported for further analysis
Being improved based on feedback
Join the beta via your Dashboard
Analytics
Available Analytics charts and reports:
Project Overview VelocityCycle Time RejectionStory CompositionBurnup
Cumulative FlowIteration ReportEpics Report Releases ReportBurndownStories Activity
INTEGRATIONSTracker lets you continue to work with your other tools - we integrate with:
• Jira
• Github
• Slack
• Zendesk
• and more
We also have Activity Web hooks and a comprehensive, well documented API
INTEGRATION FOCUS - JIRA
When you drag from the Jira integration panel, it creates a new story with the title, description & a link to the originating Jira ticket.
After that, Tracker changes e.g. states and added comments are reflected in Jira, but Jira changes are not reflected in the Tracker story. So you would not see workflow state changes in Jira reflected in Tracker.
INTEGRATION FOCUS - GITHUBThe Tracker API supports integration with post-commit hooks of Source Control Management (SCM) systems such as Subversion, Git/Github, etc. (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/community/tracker-blog/guide-githubs-service-hook-tracker)
When a commit is made to the SCM, a trigger can call the Tracker API to add a story comment with the commit ID, author and message. It can also optionally change story state.
USING PANELSPanels / UI
Drag drop to rearrange panels
Choose panel width (fixed vs auto)
In fixed mode double click panel header to fit panels to browser
Clone panels
Split/combine current and backlog
Layouts
Favorite Searches & Epics
STORY VIEWS + OPTIONSHide accepted stories in current
Add stories directly to current, backlog and icebox panels
View history
Story density modes
VELOCITYADD STORY
VELOCITYHISTORY
STORY DENSITYDense:
Normal:
Minimal:
Projector:
MARKDOWNUse Markdown to add richer content such as:
bold/italic
numbered and bulleted lists
code blocks
headers
images
CLICK HERE FOR HOW TO USE TRACKER-FLAVORED MARKDOWN
NOTIFICATIONS SETTINGSGet there via Profile under your user name
In app notifications
Email notifications
Mute notifications per project (though you’ll still get direct mentions)
Email and in-app notifications keep you up to date
You can be @mentioned, @mention others and follow stories
"State changes relevant to me" provides notifications when:
A story you requested is Delivered
A story you own is Accepted or Rejected
Make the customer/verifier the Requester ... they will get email updates for comments and delivered stories
Use in-app notifications for mentions only ... this makes the things you need to see and take action on more visible.
NOTIFICATIONS
IN-APP NOTIFICATIONSMark each notification as read
Mark all read
Reveal the related story
Open your notifications into a panel that persists in your project to have a real-time feed of notifications to easily respond to
Keyboard shortcuts - See under Help & Updates in any project or use SHIFT+?
Multi Select - Click or shift click the selection boxes to the right of collapsed stories
Clone stories - via in expanded story or top left options when you select one or more
Clone Panels - Reorder stories more conveniently by dragging between two views of the same panel, side by side
Combine Current & Backlog - via the Panel Actions menu at the top right of the Current or Backlog panels
Don’t estimate bugs and chores - that option is off by default
Back-date stories - if they need to be in a prior iteration via the date picker in an expanded accepted story
Have a standard set of labels - such as blocked, needs discussion, needs design
Override Velocity - by clicking velocity number in Sidebar for a personal view of the impact of possible velocities or crank it up to temporarily remove iteration markers in your view
PRO TIP ROUNDUP
Link Stories & epics - by pasting their URLs in to another story or epic. Mouse over them after saving to see a preview
Cross project Search & My Work - are one of several reasons Workspaces work for you
Search Hints - click the ? icon to the right of the Search field for a cheat sheet, then SEARCH HELP in that pop-up for more
Projector mode - When you’re sharing your screen or projecting your project make it easier to see via in Sidebar
Move and adjust panels to suit you - e.g In fixed mode double click panel header to fit panels to browser
Make the customer/verifier the Requester - they will get email updates for comments and delivered stories
Use in-app notifications for mentions only - to make them visible. Use email notifications (and email client rules) for the rest
PRO TIP ROUNDUP
FOR MORE …Help menu (when in a project):
Intro Tour
Recent Updates: www.pivotaltracker.com/help/recentupdates
In Help menu & footer - Help Center: help.pivotaltracker.com which includes:
Getting Started articles to get your team up to speed quickly
In depth articles and Tracker details
Where to find the App Bazaar listing of 3rd party tools
Info on integrations with Jira, Github, Slack and more
Comprehensive API Doc
Interesting public project: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/n/projects/966314
Tips from a customer
How Tracker team manages design work
System Status: status.pivotaltracker.comSupport: [email protected] Blog: www.pivotaltracker.com/community/tracker-blog/Follow us on Twitter @pivotaltracker