productivity

A collection of 155 posts

productivity

Remote Control

Most people who have worked remote will agree—nay—commiserate on how hard it is. I’ve done it before, and while it never really gets easier, you learn to get used to it. One of the most glorious and unfortunate things about the internet is immediate access to distributed

productivity

Gansen and Kunesh on Agile Development in the Obama 2012 Campaign

The Obama 2012 campaign has been hailed as the most tech-savvy and data-driven to date, a sophisticated operation led by CTO Harper Reed. Reed had no problem finding developers eager to join the campaign—the challenge was finding people up for the formidable task before them. A Presidential campaign poses

productivity

Making Testing Visible in the Tracker Workflow

As a feature story progresses through the Tracker workflow, a lot of testing activities are also underway. Team members are collaborating to turn examples of desired behaviors into business-facing tests that guide development. Testers are performing manual exploratory testing on stories as they are delivered. Performance or security testing may

productivity

Why Are All the Stories in Lite Tracker Missing Descriptions?

I asked this to my pair on my first day here at Pivotal. “That’s on purpose. A user story is a promise to have a conversation. When we start a story, we’ll have a discussion with the client to fill in the details.” “Ok. So we’ll just

productivity

Its the Volatility That Will Kill You

Volatility is what Lite Tracker uses to measure the consistency of your team’s work output. You can use that number to help you estimate the first approximation to answer the eternal question, “Will I make the deadline?” One fine day at the office… You’ve scoped out 100 points

productivity

Tracker Screencast: Release Markers

What’s a release? For us at Tracker it’s a marker in your backlog that represents the most important milestones. As you can see in the screencast, creating a release marker is just like making a story. It’s that mysterious one on the end. In a conversation with

productivity

Tracker Screencast: How Many Ways Can You View a File Attachment?

This screencast covers a lot of bases. Check it out to see file attachments and full page story view in action! There are a couple ways to attach files. Drag them into an open story or press the paper clip button, and don’t forget, you can drag in multiple

productivity

Tracker Screencast: Project Tabs

I seem to discover new things in Tracker all the time. After looking over the shoulder of someone on the dev team and seeing all their projects in “tabs” on top of their current project, I scratched my head thinking, “When do I get that!?” Is this a new feature

productivity

In the Beginning There Was: The Sample Project

It can be stifling to jump into a big project as a new user or team member, you don’t want to accidentally delete stuff, reprioritize iterations etc. We’ve got you covered; try out a sample project. We designed this on purpose as a sandbox for people to poke

productivity

Tracker Screencast: Shortcuts!

Shortcuts rock, make things easier, and let you move more quickly in Tracker. This screencast says it all but here’s the cheat sheet which you can get to with the ? button. The seatbelt light’s off, you’re free to move about Tracker with your keyboard! Wait till the

productivity

Tracker Screencast: Reorganize Panels with Multiple Story Selection, Cloning Panels, and More!

When you’re running East and the project goes West, it’s time to reorganize the backlog. This can be painful but Tracker comes to the rescue with multiple story selection and cloning panels. Here’s a little cheat sheet! Dan Podsedly covered this in a blog post last year,

productivity

Tracker on the Agile Continuum

In Tracker support, I take delight in answering support requests we get from people on teams who are thinking through the way they make software and how Tracker fits into that process. Recently, a customer asked us if Tracker can support their team’s switch from a more Scrum-focused process

productivity

Velocity Matters

Last week, we made a slight tweak to how velocity is calculated in Lite Tracker, to handle team strength overrides in a simpler, more explainable way. As a result, if your project has an adjusted team strength in a recent iteration, you may be seeing a slightly different velocity. Details

productivity

Screencast: The Current and the Backlog, Together Again!

Today’s screencast is about understanding workflow in Tracker, with a twist of organization. The Current panel shows you all of the stories your team is working on this week, or “iteration,” including those that are in progress, as well as stories that Tracker thinks you’re going to get

productivity

Working on Multiple Projects? Velocity Got You Down?

The Tracker Team gets some variation of this question a lot: “I work on one project one week and a different one another week and it’s really throwing off our project’s velocity. Is there something we can do to account for the changes in team strength?” Check out

productivity

The Viewer Role: Giving Read-Only Access to Your Projects

There are times when you might want to invite someone to your project but only give them read-only privileges in it. You might also want to change an existing project member’s access so they can see your project but not add stories or make changes to it. Also, read-only

productivity

How Gov.UK Keeps Calm and Carries on with Tracker

The courageous folk working on the GOV.UK website (an experimental “beta” replacement for Directgov and the first step towards a single government website) have regularly written about their experience and their blog is a worthwhile read. Their most recent article Delivering Inside Government, posted by Peter Herlihy, offers great

productivity

Using Epics for Your Project

We recently launched epics, to make it easier to plan and track progress of large features at a high level. Whether you are in the early stages of defining your product or have a Lite Tracker project you are working in already, epics can help you manage your work more

News

Lite Tracker Introductory Webinar Next Wed (Dec 21)—Register Now!

We’re planning the first of an ongoing series of Webinars for Lite Tracker users for next Wednesday, Dec 21, at 11:00am PST (19:00 GMT). This is going to be a one-hour session, via GoToWebinar. Anyone is more than welcome to join, but this particular session will be

productivity

Adding Lite Tracker to Your Google Apps Domain

Here’s a brief video that walks through the process of provisioning Lite Tracker for your Google Apps domain. For more info on the Google Apps integration, see my previous blog post. Originally published here. Originally published by: Dan Podsedly.

productivity

New Lite Tracker Video: Introduction to the Concepts

We’ve just published a new video that introduces the concepts behind Lite Tracker. It talks about the Agile process that works best with Tracker, including story breakdown and estimation, prioritization, and workflow. If you’re new to Tracker, or would like to make sure you’re getting the most

productivity

What Happens to Lite Tracker Projects at the End of the Free Trial?

This has been a common question recently, and so I’d like to take a few minutes and explain how the 60-day free trial works in Lite Tracker, clarify what your options are at the end of the trial, and also revisit what public projects are again. When you first

productivity

Consolidating Tracker Projects into One Account

Accounts in Lite Tracker are used for project organization and administration delegation. They are also what paid subscription plans are associated with. In this article, I’d like to explain what accounts are, and talk about how you can consolidate existing Tracker projects across your company into a single account.

productivity

Defrosting Your Icebox

Lite Tracker makes it easy to add stories to you project. Hit Ctrl-A, type a quick sentence along the lines of “As a user, I can…so that…”. On most of our projects, we find ourselves discovering new stories all the time, based on the continuous feedback loop that Tracker

productivity

One Team, One Tracker Project

I often hear questions from Lite Tracker users about how to organize teams and projects. We also see many requests for features that would make it easier to see stories from across multiple projects. Tracker is designed for full immersion in one project at a given time. This stems from