[teampractices] Experimenting with Pivotal Tracker

[Steven Walling]

On Thursday, November 14, 2013, Arthur Richards wrote:

> Ok, Pivotal Tracker actually looks pretty slick. You don't get the same
> level of customization that you do with Mingle. AFAICT with about 20 mins
> of poking around (so I could be wrong about some of this), you cant create
> arbitrary card types, enforce arbitrary workflows, create and save custom
> views, generate arbitrary reports, create macros to do all kinds of crazy
> things like complex graph generation, create custom lanes on the wall,
> create different backlogs (eg release vs iteration), etc etc. However,
> maybe my account doesn't have sufficient permissions to modify some of
> these things and the flexibility is just hidden from me.
>

No, I made you an admin so you saw everything Arthur.

Pivotal definitely uses the structure of the application to enforce a
simple Scrum workflow. Even Fulcrum, the FOSS clone community, is very
strict about saying no to adding more customization to support alternative
methodologies like Kanban.


>
>
> It looks to have a LOT of the simplicity you get with Trello, with basic
> enforcement of standard scrum-y tenants, basic reporting tools, and simple
> workflow management - I think this would probably work well for most, but
> some may find it too limiting. Then again, maybe the limitations are a good
> thing - it's easy to get carried away in Mingle once you get over the steep
> learning curve of managing a project there. Plus, there is no mobile app
> for Mingle which drives me insane, and not just because I'm on the mobile
> team... I took a quick spin with 'turning point' - one of the few pivotal
> tracker apps in the android play store. Seems pretty straightforward and
> like you can do a lot of what you can in the webapp.
>

Yes the official Pivotal app is pretty decent as well.


>
> The API looks robust; but the devil is always in the details - APIs in
> practice are usually different beasts than their documentation may lead you
> to believe. With a quick glance though the docs, it looks like we would be
> able to make tools like bingle and gingle to use the Pivotal API.
>
> From the feedback I've heard from Tomasz and the apps team, this might
> actually be a really good fit for their needs.
>
> I'm really curious to hear from others who have Mingle experience -
> particularly to hear if Pivotal Tracker would be an acceptable replacement.
>
> Swalling, I may have goobered a few things up on the Growth board in
> Pivotal - I hope it really is experimental and I didn't screw things up for
> you guys :p
>

No worries. The team has not switched to Pivotal Tracker yet, I just
duplicated the core of our engineering stories  from the current sprint as
a test.


>
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 2:13 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'arichards at wikimedia.org');>
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Steven Walling <swalling at wikimedia.org<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'swalling at wikimedia.org');>
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> This brings up a big issue with both FOSS and proprietary tools: how do
>>> we get our data out and migrate it if necessary?
>>>
>>> Trello exports a board in JSON, and Pivotal will import/export CSV. Does
>>> Mingle have data export functions?
>>>
>>
>> Yes. Mingle only exports a full project in a proprietary serialized
>> format, but you can also selectively export cards into a CSV.  I haven't
>> tried it, but theoretically you should be able to create a query that
>> returns ALL cards that you have and export them into a CSV. Mingle can
>> import from the serialized format or from arbitrary CSV.
>>
>> --
>> Arthur Richards
>> Software Engineer, Mobile
>> [[User:Awjrichards]]
>> IRC: awjr
>> +1-415-839-6885 x6687
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Arthur Richards
> Software Engineer, Mobile
> [[User:Awjrichards]]
> IRC: awjr
> +1-415-839-6885 x6687
>


-- 
Steven Walling,
Product Manager
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
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