What are some approaches for organizing tasks in Pivotal Tracker?

Question

We're just started using Pivotal Tracker to manage our todo list for our main application. We recently began a huge new feature, and so the last 50 or so tasks are all to do with that feature.

However, I now have to make a hotfix for our current release, and it just feels wrong to stick it in with all of the tasks for the big new feature. I'd like to find a standard way to organize similar tasks.

So, how are some ways that you organize tasks in Pivotal Tracker (or another system if it's relevant)?

Do you create tags for each feature and each release? If a bug is related to a feature, do you tag it as such? Where do you draw the line between a taggable feature verses a simple client request?

Thanks! I'm very eager to hear your thoughts!

Answer 1

Tracker is a very opinionated piece of software, and it works best with its own particular workflow. There's a pretty in-depth explanation video at http://bit.ly/conceptsofpivotaltracker

The short answer to your specific "how do you organize tasks?":

• label Feature Stories to group them into tracks (eg if you were building Amazon, tracks might be things like 'Shopping Cart', 'Payment', 'Manage Inventory' and 'Recommendations'.).

• use Release Markers (its another story type, like Feature or Bug) to denote releases. Release markers are usually things like 'Show to investors', 'Shopping Cart Complete', 'Start Beta test' or 'v2'.

In your case, I'd give those 50 tasks a "huge new feature" label, and make the hotfix a bug.