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Pivotal Tracker Getting Started Guide

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DEFINITIONS

Pivotal Tracker • Story-based project planning tool from Pivotal Labs.

Based on agile software methods• Aims to maximize team velocity rather than points

scored by individualsProjects• Engage, Distro, Business, Operations, Backend

(based on teams)Iteration• Time span of 1 working week is called an iteration.

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Story is a basic unit in pivotal• Represents small, concrete

deliverable for a project.• Easily comprehensible and verifiable.• Placeholder for ongoing

conversations. • Maybe estimated in points.

Tasks: • To-do list while someone

works on a story• Task status does not affect

overall story status.

DEFINITIONS

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LABELS, RELEASES AND CHARTS

• Labels are tags, associated with stories. They are used to organize stories. All labels in the project can be seen in the Labels & Searches panel.

• A Release is a special type of story that represents a milestone in the backlog. Releases may be tied to production code pushes or they may simply represent a group of related features.

• Charts available in Pivotal Tracker : https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help#whatchartsareavailableintracker

TYPES OF STORIES

Name Can have Points

Description How it looks

Features Yes Adds incremental business value.

Chores No Necessary stories but provide no direct value e.g. investigation stories

Bugs No Any defect in current functionality.

Releases No Delimits a set of stories within a deadline

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Finish the Story

Start Working on the Story

Estimate the story

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4 Commit SVN & Deploy to Live

5Verify

STATES OF A STORY

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ESTIMATION OF POINTS

Points Description Appearance

0 Nothing new being added i.e. Chores & Bugs

1,2 Smallest imaginable change in code

3 Concrete Feature. You know exactly beforehand what is required to fix it

5 Concrete Feature. Description is cloudy, and you don’t know beforehand but you have to figure it out.

8 Epics. A completely abstract story that resembles a mini project

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DEFINITIONS

Velocity• Average number of points accepted per iteration, based on

recently completed iterations.

How is velocity calculated ?• Accepted stories in the current iteration move to the Done panel. • Team velocity is a running average of the velocity of the past 3

iterations. • Remaining stories are grouped into future iterations based on

velocity.

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DEFINITIONS : COLLECTIONS

Name DescriptionIcebox Collection of un-prioritized storiesBacklog Collection of prioritized storiesCurrent Collection of stories which are being worked upon this

week. Goal is to finish as many stories possible from this collection.

Done Collection of all accepted stories in past weeks (iterations).

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CASE: MULTIPLE PEOPLE WORKING ON SAME STORY? e.g. designer & developer working on a feature (1 story)

• Designer gets the story first & estimates in consultation with dev

• After finishing design tasks, designer assigns the story to dev

• Developer finishes dev work, deploys feature and updates story

• Story can be accepted once the feature is deployed to live.

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ROLE OF PRODUCT MANAGERS / PRODUCT OWNERS / TECH LEADS

• Put all ongoing work into Pivotal

• Current should contain stories being worked on this week.

• Accept/Reject stories ASAP

• Before weekly meeting, get everyone to update current status of

stories

• Delete out-dated stories from backlog or icebox.

• Next week of backlog is the highest-priority stuff.

• Estimate stories yourself to prioritize it in backlog

• Make sure next 2 weeks of backlog are estimated. Get estimates from

engineers if possible, otherwise fill in with your own estimate.

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HOW TO REPORT PIVOTAL STORIES IN EOD?

TODAY1) Fixed & Deployed http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/3480662 Reconcile the different channel types Changeset: http://jboutelle.trac.cvsdude.com/slideshare/changeset/18670

2) Fixed and Committed http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/3735705 Refactor the channels code Changeset: http://jboutelle.trac.cvsdude.com/slideshare/changeset/18670

3) Worked on http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/3735705 Analytics front-end refactor , 40% complete

TOMORROW4) Work on http://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/3735705 Profile redesign for PRO

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Happy PivotingThank You

https://sites.google.com/a/slideshare.com/intranet/how-to-use-pivotal-tracker