Why Pivotal Tracker was Special
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.
I thought I’d have to write this as more of a persuasive argument, but it turns out I still have the data to back up why this feeling exists. I still have access to five accounts in Pivotal Tracker. These five accounts have 53 different projects and 18,959 stories. These represent a major part of my personal and professional life. Inside these projects are the record of collaboration of dozens of friends across thousands of problems and solutions. They form a literal collection of stories that a huge portion of my life was tied to. And the record of those stories has all of the human emotions that bind me to people and places and history. Inside that record is the record of my personal work, my closest friends’ work, the work of people who hired me, people who fired me, and the teams that created amazing things together. You can see four different startup acquisitions, about a half a dozen failed projects, and a ton of grit to keep projects alive and moving forward. While the record itself is interesting, it’s the memory and the feelings that it is connected to that led to sadness. At least that’s part of it.
The other part of the sadness I felt is that Pivotal was the one tool that I could return to with joy. I cannot think of another tool (Slack might be close) where the interactions were so consistent and good and helpful that I felt supported by the tool in my work instead of having to push and pull and fight the tool to do what I wanted. It became the software antithesis of Jira for me. Whatever pain and frustration I experienced in Jira melted away when I went back to Pivotal. I think many people experienced this. They often experienced it when moving the opposite direction. When their company felt like they had outgrown Pivotal only to land in the monstrosity of Jira where they could “manage” things better.
So, these are the reaons why I felt sad when I learned Pivotal was going away. It’s also why I’m motivated to ensure that goodness is not lost forever. There are others trying to replace Pivotal, and I am cheering them on, but I want to keep the ethos of Pivotal alive more than the particulars. I think part of the reason the product failed is because it was stuck without committment towards those original ideals and meandered towards compromise and increment “upgrades” for enterprises. I’d like to take a different path and bring the ethos of Pivotal back in a new tool that evolves and continues to get better and better at the core thing it does. This is why we’re building for small teams and individuals first. I’d be happy if we build a business with thousands of users paying a few dollars a month to have the tool that is right sized for them. No one should have to pull Jira off the shelf until they have hundreds of people operating and building together. Even then I’m not convinced there’s a better way.
We’ll see how far we get, but sadness and loss are amazing motivators and I’m definitely motivated to see this through to a valuable product that enriches the world and helps us all keep building more effectively!
