I’d consider myself a power user of Pivotal Tracker. I’ve written over 15,000 stories and interacted with many more while managing dozens of software projects over a decade.

Now that I’m working on an alternative to Pivotal Tracker, aiming to replicate much of its functionality, I’ve had to think deeply about what makes the system feel so simple yet powerful. I believe three key elements contribute to this:

1. Pivotal is designed for what it is, not for what everyone wants it to be.

2. Pivotal is primarily a single-view application.

3. Pivotal makes many decisions for the user.

There’s a growing movement in software development to eliminate work item estimation. It’s not just about rejecting estimates for the sake of it—it’s a well-thought-out approach that achieves the same outcomes as sophisticated estimation techniques, but with far less overhead. By focusing on breaking down work and building software rather than assigning arbitrary numbers to tasks, teams can reduce process waste and operate more efficiently.

I was sad when I found out that Pivotal Tracker was going to be shut down. I am not using sadness here as an exaggerated or artificial description. I actually felt like I lost part of myself. I suspect others felt a similar thing. Why? Why such a strong emotion to a simple piece of software that was largely a transactional tool.