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well hello everybody it's a another edition of Pivotal Conversations this time we're back to

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our usual format with with richard myself and a uh and a guest we had a few i guess you could

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call them live because that sounds cool a few live to tape recordings that we did at spring

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one platform but now uh now that's all over with and we're back in our geographies and not sucking

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in the exciting vegas air it's a dry heat there people would tell me if you show up in las vegas

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from texas everyone's obsessed about differentiating their heat but i finally met someone from uh

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uh mississippi and you know we had some common ground about the i guess the wet heat as it were

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how about yourself richard did you have fun uh figuring out how the heat is different than up

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in seattle i did yeah i live in seattle i was in los angeles last week where there was just heat

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i guess it was dry you know 100 is 100 so i i guess heat is heat at some point you're just trying to

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justify uh the types of clothes you're wearing and how many showers you take yeah yeah that's that's a

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constant justification we do a roi pivot table on that showers and clothes changes and uh based on

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your top line growth never mind the bottom line optimization which is always expanding so

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totally unrelated to that comment why don't you introduce yourself guest

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hi uh happy to be here my name is uh ronan dunlop and i head up marketing for pivotal tracker which is uh

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pivotal's product management tool of choice well so we're gonna dive into that uh such a such as we

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we do diving in the the i get the second sort of half of the show but first we have some news items

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to go over just very little brief things so first of all i uh i mentioned we are back from SpringOne

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now we've at first i think because you know you have to edit the videos and stuff there was a bit

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of a trickle of videos that we have but i just noticed this morning one of our our uh our sales

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people john gross handler like posted a big old playlist of videos we have on youtube there's like

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no legion or nothing you can just go go check them out and there's uh there's one there i did a

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presentation there and ignite one and one of those is in there and i think most all of the keynotes

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uh from from customers and users of pivotal are in there with all sorts of other delightful ones and

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we'll put a link to it in the show notes but man there's there's a lot of viewing in there

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yeah i think there's a hundred or so in there and then i think john uh jumped the gun which is exciting

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because once you share links then you can't tell people their embargo i know that's that's the uh

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the secret the secret of the secret of pivotal guerrilla marketing is just uh just post it

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see what happens but yeah there's no these are a lot of the high priority videos uh we have a

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a syndication deal with infoq we're going to also be publishing a lot of more technical talks

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through infoq over the next many months but these are a lot as you mentioned the keynotes a number

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of great customer case studies i don't know i mean you and i Coté attended a lot of us and then

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i was impressed with the quality of the case studies so it was fun to watch some of these i know

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some have already gotten shared socially and getting some good traffic yeah they are pretty

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nice well i'll be you know i think all of us will be but uh one of the things i always do with this

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these kind of things is is watch them and go in and like make urls of the time codes specific things

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because i was talking with someone recently you know a lot of the a lot of the type of content work

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and talking with people that i do kind of depends on uh extensive footnotes so i was remembering back

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when i was learning to write in middle school they used to make you write down facts on four by five

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note cards and it's sort of like you know you got to go into the videos and gather up all those note

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cards and as i understand it once you have a sufficient number of note cards an essay spontaneously

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creates itself so so that'll be fantastic it'll just be essays everywhere fantastic we should really

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call what we produce in like uh corporate marketing like essays wouldn't that be quaint like not a white

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paper like this is an essay that we have on on migrating from an esb good old essay right long

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form essays well speaking of essays another news item is that the uh gartner infrastructure as a

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service magic quadrant is out i you know in one of my uh my other podcasts just last week that

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software defined talk we we talked about it in our uh i don't know kind of raunchy and rebald kind of

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way very we're a very clean family friendly podcast here very professional but uh there there's a

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reprint that you can get that and and so you can kind of read over it and and i'll you know i'll give

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more of a pointer to the i did a blog post of highlights from it and we talked about it in the

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podcast but i think for me uh you know i mean there's two things of interest one there's not that

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many uh vendors so to speak on the quadrant which is kind of interesting to think about and there's

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basically two groups as called out by the commentary itself the winners which if i remember are amazon

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and azure and then everyone else and that's that's that's the other part that's kind of a an interesting

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theme uh throughout the commentary of the magic quadrant is uh this i think i think the wording

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they have is like this phase of of the ias market is is over and check in back in like 2018

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for another phase of it if it should occur and that other phase they kind of highlight a little bit of

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what they think um i forget all the authors it's definitely lydia and her gang but it's uh it's

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essentially like it's it seems to be that ias and paz are emerging more and more or that the leading ias

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vendors have a lot of paz functionality and they start they start showing up hand in hand which of course

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we care a lot about being in the don't call it a paz paz market ourselves

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yeah it's a good read i mean i we've got the reprint link in the show notes and it is a beast there's a

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lot of content in there but i think as you mentioned the top line takeaways are a azure is catching up

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and then b everyone else's niche i mean those are probably your two biggest takeaways coming from

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this and as you mentioned there's a lot of other good meaty stuff in there around kind of this

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convergence of application concepts and infrastructure concepts there's plenty of mode one mode two

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sprinkled in there for for goodness but overall i mean this is a culmination of a lot of work before

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i i joined pivotal i was working for one of the is providers in the quadrant and you know that was a

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feat of of effort to get that survey filled out it was it's a monster so i i say that because there's

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a lot of data that goes into this this is not dartboard stuff this is not just who do i like

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this is extremely data driven and every mq is not the same it depends on the the team putting it

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together but this one you know they use the products a lot of interviews a lot of inquiries

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and then a giant survey a good data driven stuff in here you may not like where your favorite provider

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sits in there but it's hard to argue with the output yeah so i mean it's definitely worth uh worth

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running over there yeah i i think i think anyone who's had to uh uh fill out the surveys for magic

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quadrants has a whole different appreciation for them so they do give you out they give you a t-shirt

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when you're done which which i appreciate it that'd be fantastic maybe shot out from a cannon towards you

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that that would be that would be appropriate well you know we have a rare opportunity i think

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with with the news items to ask our guest as as a potential customer of that stuff because because tracker

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runs as a service if i remember so so do you guys over there like do you get all excited about the

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magic quadrant coming out like how do you think about where you run tracker and and uh where you

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operate it um that's an interesting question you know we we're you know we have some uh

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big players in our field and i think this whole space is changing to a certain degree uh you know

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there's the ibm's of the world the hp's of the world am i allowed to mention other people like that

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i'm not too too sure um and uh and you know they've done a you know a bang up job in the past

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of having these these highly sophisticated uh you know uh application life cycle management tools um

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and uh and you know i think you know pivotal has taken a very different much more agile approach to

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software development and i think this is something that is somewhat new to the enterprise and i do believe

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that these magic quadrants do focus on the larger institutions so we've come much we've come down from

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a bottoms-up approach from the startup world and and we're breaking into the enterprise more and more

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on a team level i guess i should say and uh we just had we had a first discussion with um

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with some analysts was a week or two ago and talking about our position and uh it's interesting i don't

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think we you know i think if anything we pop up as a as a nice footnote as something to watch but you

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know we're not competing head to head with uh these these very large all-in-one uh tools but uh but

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you know the the funny thing about tracker is that it's you know it's it's got such an affordable price

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point that we're we're often in in many of these enterprises but uh just teams have decided to not

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really tell anybody just use tracker put it on their credit card and slip the expenses in somehow so

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so uh so it's interesting that we are in the enterprise but not you know serving right now

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10 000 people for example right it's sort of the under the radar quadrant which which is which which

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which we kind of like actually sure but it's hard it's hard to get customer quotes when you're flying

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under the radar because they actually want to remain hush-hush to not be discovered yeah yeah and even the

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quadrant itself i think it was clear to point out that this is the enterprise perspective of the

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clouds as well they're right i mean you might love digital ocean you might love one of some of these

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other solutions and you may think they're superior for some because it fits your use case that this is

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a gartner-centric view of the world so you still you know based on other criteria your rankings may

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be different so sometimes people get worked up i know google's amazing they're the best cloud in the

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world for their their stuff absolutely and for their use case maybe they are for you that doesn't mean

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the gartnery mode one or two world where they're looking at enterprisey tools and integrations that

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it is the same fit so it's interesting it's not the only playbook or the only scorecard

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and then the uh the last news item speaking of like uh public cloud land i you know i didn't read

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too much in this but i remember the headline that uh this is like maybe last week or something that that

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the google cloud added in at sql or sql server support which is which is uh i mean i i i know two things about

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that one it's microsoft's database and i remember i remember those my favorite some of my favorite tech

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ads ever where there was this is many years ago but they were like little eight bit like sort of

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pictures and they're big these big skyscrapers and helicopters were coming in dropping off sql servers

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on top of them it was like a uh it was an interesting sort of perspective but two you know if i remember

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market share i don't know if they're number one but they're definitely in number two like their

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sql server is way up there and i think i think i think it's one of those market as with most market

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share stuff if you know it it's obvious but if you haven't really thought about it you would you

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would not quite realize it but by this time like sql server turns out for probably a decade or more

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is is kind of a big deal so uh i think i think it's a little wonder that uh you see that added to to

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cloud support yeah google was a little late in adding kind of straight up windows support when they

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first launched google cloud was all linux centric and then they added windows and as you mentioned i

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don't know if they're still doing drone-based delivery as you described the sql servers and uh

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companies but uh yeah absolutely when you look at the transaction per second all the benchmarky stuff

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sql servers you know usually one or two they're from sales perspective it's a great deal for microsoft

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so for google to show that they're enterprisey and legitimate in this space adding sql server support

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was huge and then they also finally ga'd a lot of their other data products like they have a

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mysql relational database as a service they have a column based no sql storage big table and then

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they've got more of a document based no sql storage option and you know these are measured in you know

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of course in google scale like oh this you know processes trillions of requests like of course it does

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because it's a google product so all of those are generally available i think it just continues to

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reinforce i did dip into the gartner conference san diego last week and attended for a couple days and

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was impressed by the google sessions because you can argue that their breadth of service is still

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catching up to microsoft and azure you can argue that they're not as enterprisey but boy you can't

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argue that they had don't have probably the most impressive tech underneath it as they've got this

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ridiculous network footprint and a ridiculous amount of compute so you know if if silly performance is

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your game then it's hard to argue with what google is doing speaking of magazine ads it's like on the

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back of every trade rag uh which is to say magazine about technology when it was in three dimensions

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very thin three dimensions but three dimensions nonetheless there used to be those ads that would compare

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sort of like uh spark chips to x86 chips and things like that and those are always entertaining what

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was it silly performance things just to see what your raw your raw speed was those is a great there

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should be some tumblr blog somewhere of old tech ads unfortunately i've recycled all those magazines

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but maybe i can go to the uh the used bookstore find some old ones and get you know a kajillion followers

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like me i would subscribe i would read it we've got at least one and then i'll i'll use a fake

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account to subscribe to myself and there'll be two it'll be fantastic well you know to to as an ad hoc

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kind of topic how how was the gardner catalyst thing how would you uh first of all what is it and then

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how would you summarize it yeah so gardner catalyst is their annual event i think they've been doing

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san diego for a little while now and this is their more technical oriented conference so this is meant

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to be the group that is a little more in the weeds of tech you still saw a lot of sport coats so this

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was not you know the hacker community this was still you know people wearing suits in some cases and

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and then those sorts of things but it's still meant to be more technical you know the pivotal booth is

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right next to mesosphere and you know and others who are doing containers and so this was not just you

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know show me high level load testing tools and and giant monolithic project tools so good good for that

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so good conference you know awesome audience i think it was like 16 1700 people great crowd good location

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and the content was good it was you know gardner it was definitely some higher level reviews of stuff

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some of the case study stuff was interesting some of the technical discussions were good but you know the

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booth traffic i i did uh man the booth just as eye candy i didn't have a lot to say but i was at the

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booth and and listening to conversations was interesting many many many people still walking up saying we're

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starting our cloud journey like wow what year is this but it's easy in our my twitter tech bubble or you

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know when i just chat with friends to think boy everyone is just you know a week away from containerizing

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their legacy siebel app and then you realize that these people have just started to pick

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cloud you know they're just even getting into is so i i think an awesome reminder that we have to

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continue to blaze a trail but let's not assume that we've just moved on to the next cool thing

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and we're not talking about what actually mainstream technology professionals are actually dealing with

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day-to-day so good conference great reminder that it is really easy for us to go devops is already

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getting passe we're on to microservices and micro kernels like good lord people are just figuring out

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platforms as a service and you know accelerating cicd but let's not move off of any of these things yet

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let's actually double down on them yeah blazing through the blazers yeah i mean i think i i was

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looking at some of our uh some we were discussing the conference internally and yeah i mean what you're

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saying that kind of matches what what uh the sense that i get which is to to put it in another way

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there's this section of of the uh of it departments of the market out there which which is most of it

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that has this interesting chance to basically leapfrog over the past let's say five years of innovations in

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it and i think i think one of the things that's difficult for us uh us cool kids or said eye

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candy to realize is that like we have to uh we have to like proactively argue against and for

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a different set of things than we do in our own church so to speak right so like well we might get

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our cackles all up about like different container formats and like is this a pass or not a pass like

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it seems like when you go talk with the mainstream market they don't understand what it is you're

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talking about like thankfully for them because they didn't have to live through all this weird stuff

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and so as as the concepts you know settle down and become mainstream it's more important just to

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talk broadly about like how does this apply to how you do software and things like that and anyways

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it's it'll be it'll be an interesting challenge for all of us who talk about this stuff over the

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next few years yeah people are still just in absorption mode i mean i could tell so you have a pcf

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booth where people would walk up and go what is pivotal what's the point of a platform all

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right let's go and we'd spend you know five ten minutes i'd do some some demos and they'd walk

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next door to core os who is super low i mean we're talking container orchestration like you're not

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messing around there they yeah and it's awesome tech but that same person would go over there i'm

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thinking what is your opening line there like hey now i know what a platform is tell me what containers

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are so i i don't think it is there again people are just trying to learn and saying what is out there

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right now because we are inundated with change so i thought it was good people are clearly just trying

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to pick up some nuggets we were giving we sold out of our uh we didn't sell them we gave them away

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but all our little ebooks on matt stein's book on cloud native architecture Kevin Hoffman's on beyond

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the the 12 factor we've had him as a guest on the podcast those were just getting grabbed up like

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candy which was great because people are looking for information not just sound bites indeed well

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this this is a good uh a pro pros or you know connected to this this reminds me of something

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that happens frequently when i'm at conferences and uh as you say uh staffing the uh the booth and that

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is i i've i've often said you can divide up the type of people who walk up into three buckets and

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i'll do it in my reverse order usually there's people who like know about pivotal and everything

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that we do and they might even be customers and they just come up and they just want to

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talk shop as it were and then second there's people who don't really know anything about pivotal at all

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and they just they want to know about that and you know you you talk about them about the history

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of pivotal and what we do and and i guess if you're a good salesperson you try to have them talk

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more so you can find out about them but i can as as people can predict i usually can't help myself

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uh and and then third we have there's usually someone who comes up and you have to be really

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careful with this third set because they'll be like oh we use pivotal we've used that for years

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and this and they talk about it and they're all happy and they're like yeah we have other people

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who use like jira other things and i don't know i like i like the pivotal thing and then you realize

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oh what they mean is they know tracker and and like basically tracker has this uh kind of cult following

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out there for many many years and it's i i find that there's a lot of people who know who

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know pivotal they know they know trackers so well associated with pivotal that they just call it

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pivotal like they don't always call it tracker so how's that how's that first you're gonna try to

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make that transition but you've missed the fourth category which i have to point out which is those

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swag monsters who literally don't make eye contact walk up grab whatever you're doing and fill their

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santa bag full of giveaways for their for their family so they want the pivotal launcher rocket so we

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we did only have a few of those but you can't leave out that fourth precious category yeah those those i

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like the ones in that fourth category who are so optimized and self-aware that they just hold their

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badge out to you to scan it just like we know why we're here let's transact and be done with it that's

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right but speaking of that so here here we have uh what why don't you why don't you tell us about

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yourself and uh and then segue in yourself into like how you got involved with tracker special guest

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yes hi yeah no uh it's funny you mentioned that whole you know people going oh yeah we use

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tracker i think it's you know the reaction you get from the larger pivotal team is is excitement and

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frustration at the same time it's like um tracker does have you know it's kind of like oh yes tracker and

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it's great for us i mean we've we've grown word of mouth we've been around for 10 years now so we've

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grown organically word of mouth uh in great part thanks to you know our our relationship with pivotal

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labs so pivotal tracker is a product management tool that was created in-house a while back when

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we were experimenting when the company labs was experimenting with ruby on rails and uh and um they

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decided to build something to build up their chops in that in that space and uh and lo and behold tracker

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was built and um it you know became a tool of choice for all internal projects and then when clients

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left they asked if they could keep on using tracker so we gave them access and then over time people

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that we had no relationship with were saying oh you know i've heard of tracker can i get access

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and it just kind of grew from there and then only in the last five years did we decide to start

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charging a nominal fee for it because uh it just became so popular and we were dedicating

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a lot of bodies to it so so uh so yes a tracker is um is really uh it's an interesting tool you know we

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we're you know grown organically and we never started you know the thing about track which is

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interesting is we never originally planned to market it it was never meant to be a big cash cow or money

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maker it's just anything it's been a very good uh brand recognition tool among the development side

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yeah and i think i think the uh you know it's funny i'm i'm i'm also one of those people where

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like i i remember tracker from way back when and it's always been around and kind of in the periphery

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uh and so i i was familiar with it from uh i don't know from whenever but you know i i think i think

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recently with this idea of a a circle of code if you will which is you know we've got several versions of

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of this uh this idea but but the first part of it i think is where tracker fits in pretty well

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which is like well if you're going to be doing software development it's a pretty good idea to

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know what it is you're going to be doing and and then it follows from what you from that is like

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and then as you're doing it as the name would imply it's a good idea to kind of track it and keep up

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up with it and and it's really you know what i haven't actually used tracker uh from a developer

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perspective but it seems like a lot of what what tracker specializes in is if you're very focused

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on uh what i would generally describe as like an agile iterative process it's pretty much exactly

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the type of tool and and the tracking that you would need for doing that and and then also not only

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from a developer perspective but facilitating what the the product owner and the managers around it

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would need to do as well yeah absolutely i think that you know um it's uh i think tracker's done

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a phenomenal job of avoiding the trap of uh over listening to customers and just adding layers and

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layers of features and functionality to the point where the tool becomes really complicated to use and i

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think at the end of the day you know our our message on our and on the pivotal biosite um where you know

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our corporate message is transforming how the world builds software we're we're much more uh we're less

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and we're less uh ambitious than that you know our message for tracker is transforming how teams build

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software and um and i think at the end of the day the functional team has has really evolved in the last

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five to six years to uh to be just to be more than just developers uh with a maybe an anchor developer

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managing the project it's becoming you know uh product managers and design and and and and and testers so

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so tracker is uh trying to keep pace with that evolving modern software team i think that they're you

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know and then i know right now with the circle of code and that uh and that new message that we're putting

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out there i think tracker just fits beautifully into you know pivotal's larger mission now and it's it's uh

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yeah it's nice to see us uh see us being you know part of the the larger pivotal story well you know

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what one thing i've been curious about is is uh we have a very like like in pivotal labs the part that

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does a uh you know well well the namesake of the company and the part that does a lot of um

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agile consulting and and pairing with people to to work on these projects there's a there's a pretty

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opinionated specific way i think even people call it the pivotal way of doing things and and yet we don't

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really have like a book there's not sort of like the manual of how to do it and so i wonder like

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how how much does tracker like mirror what the pivotal way is versus being somewhat general like

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like where do you guys draw the line between like so when labs goes in and does a consulting project this

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is the way we do it realized in a tool versus like here's a general purpose tool and you know you

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know i don't i don't think the right answer is like general purpose like a like a trello or something

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because because then you have to spend a lot of time configuring it and setting it up and so i

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wonder like where that that line falls in there sure i mean yeah there's a i could talk for hours

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now on this topic um um you know it's interesting i think that uh on the one end you have these these

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powerful tools like trello that are open-ended and and very flexible but uh let you do anything and

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then on the other end so we like to see ourselves as you know having trello on one end of if we're in

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a spectrum of a small little range uh one end and then uh atlastian on the other end which is

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highly customizable and uh you know you can build your perfect project planning tool

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what distinguishes us from those two is that you know we are a planning tool right out of the box we

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are we have a structure we have a process we have a flow that's already baked into the tool whereas

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these others you have to i guess you know assert yourself on it you get you have to apply a methodology

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to make them work efficiently and tracker has always struggled with well how how prescriptive should you

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be like how flexible do you want to be because we you know we came from a place where pivotal labs has

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a pretty strong opinion on how software should be developed and and our tool was designed to support

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that process um but at the same time you know unlike pivotal labs we're out there in the world and

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people are using our tool without without the benefit of us saying you know well this may be a smarter way

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to use it or this is maybe you know this is this is how you could use this tool better so they're they're

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they're out there you know and adapting it to their own processes and environments and uh and facing

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situations that you know are are unknown to us um you know pivotal labs is really uh a nice safe place

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to code i guess you could say right it's uh and i think and uh and so you know tracker in that environment

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works great really well and so um it's optimized for that environment where it's all about the developer

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it's about you know short iterations and test driven development and pair programming and it's all

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this is beautiful you know uh sacred uh place it's almost like a monastery uh for developers and um

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and uh so i think trackers had to you know walk that line of like well that's we're great in that

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environment but outside of that environment how do we be more flexible and i think that we've done that

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rather well i think that you know at the end of the day we're still a one-page app i mean everything is

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visible it's on one page all the stories are there there's a few basic columns and it's a bit kanbany

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but you know i try and avoid that term because you know we're not strict kanban but it's very visible

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the idea was that this tool was designed for pivots to be able to work through there you know to develop code and

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efficiently and fast and uh and not get in the way of that so i think we've still we're still

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delivering on that ease of use side uh and i think for a tool that's 10 years old that could have

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gone down the path of you know jira and atlassian i think uh you know that's a huge win for us is the

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simplicity uh of of its use because when you make a tool simple to use and this is you know something

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that slack has proven and you know lots of other tools it's the iphone and the enterprise um people

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will use it and if people use your tool then the data you collect from that tool will be much more

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accurate than other tools where somebody's just putting in their time two weeks after the fact or

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adding comments to a story or a project that they built that they completed you know a while back so

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this is a tool that's used daily live by engineers and product managers and ux and um and uh so you

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know at the end of every day or even during the day minute to minute um you know a product owner can can

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get a good read on where things stand and also the nice thing about tracker one of the it's little

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special features is that you know we do this whole pointing system maybe we can get back that in a

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second but we are we're predictive to the extent that if your team uh is moving at a certain pace

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and depending on how much work you've already put into the pipeline for tracker to to digest uh we can

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we can help you predict when you'll be done with your the specific project on your product so um

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i could ramble forever why don't you tell me what else you want to say

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you touched on a few things i mean you name dropped a few key agile terms as we think about

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you know stories and points in your backlog and so i mean clearly tracker has a certain model can you

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help folks listening who may be familiar with i don't know microsoft project if that's what their their

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world is but you know the people who might be thinking of heavyweight project management tools

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what is the what is the agile overlay that sits on top of tracker as you think about backlogs and ice

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boxes and epics and so what is that kind of architecture not technical architecture but what are those components

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that make up a tracker story or solution yeah uh yeah i'm the marketing guy right i'm not even the product

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marketing guy so um uh so we're not gonna get too technical on tracker but um you know i think at

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the end of the day it's all about um movement and and you know and the true term of agile is agility

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right to be able to move forward and for the whole team to be able to to do so and not just one or two

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two individuals um you know tracker is uh as i said a one-page app that breaks uh the work down into

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tasks that we call stories and each little story is like a its own individual email if you would like

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it's a self-contained bucket of uh that that communicates to the team what is required so whether

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it's as simple as i want to be able to drag this item into the shopping cart or i need to be able to

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delete this item from my shopping cart how would you go ahead and you know flow that so um

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and all the conversations that the team needs to have happen in these you know little stories and uh

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and tracker has four flavors of stories we have a feature story which is the major the core component

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of tracker and uh it has a few baked in elements such as uh the ability to point the story

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and to assign team members uh as well as um you know attach documents that have conversations in there

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then we have a very simple bug tracking tool so you can either choose a story to be a feature or a bug

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and at the end of the day this is you know not an overly complex bug tracking tool if you see a bug

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you write up your story label it a bug and that's the bug and then your you know your testing team can

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decide on on if they want to have like a template that they want to add to each of their bug stories but

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uh and then we have uh release markers and chores so it's a very simple process uh and you know it's

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one of those things that a development team can get it within half an hour or an hour even if they're

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not that familiar with agile they can get the basic work workflow and uh and they can hit the ground

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running right away and um but you know i think what people discover is that the more that they

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you have to embrace agile to a certain degree so if you're coming from a microsoft

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project world where uh it's it's a bit of a rude awakening because there's a certain there's a

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philosophy that's baked into tracker and when i first was exposed to agile i was a little bit

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it was a shock to the system right when you you know it's it's shoot first and second it's kind of

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basic philosophy and you kind of readjust because you have these very quick feedback loops these short

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feedback loops that allow you to course correct at any given point in time um six months or in a year

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that's uh that's no longer the case we know we're all about what can we do this week and what can we

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start what can we even do this day right i mean that's and that's i think i mean you touched on

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it just with that statement but somebody who comes in and thinking we're going to add

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our traditional 36 month projects backlog into tracker and kind of put all those into one monolithic

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release like i don't even know if correct tracker would collapse under the weight of you know 8 000

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stories in one release but i mean there's the whole point you're trying to it almost the tool helps

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encourage you towards quick rapid releases no that's absolutely and i and i and i i i'm going to i'm

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on account of you just said i mean tracker actually doesn't collapse under that level of that number

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of stories i mean trello does uh but but tracker actually is extremely robust and we can handle an

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infinite amount of stories i think that i think that uh you know what's what i like to you know

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describe tracker as is a much more honest product management tool than most i mean there's no way

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that a product owner can predict what's going to happen a year from now and have everything mapped

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out to be aligned perfectly with that release date and make that happen in a very smooth orderly fashion

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from day one to day 365 from now it's just not possible um people come and go uh needs change

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requirements change it's just too far out and you know and one of the core tenets of of agile is that

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you know developers are are terrible at uh determining how long it will take to do something

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so you know one of the things that's that's a core component of track that i think many of our users get

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but it's one of the more challenging aspects of tracker is is the pointing system and then when you break

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work down and you try and point to all your features is is thinking in terms of complexity how how difficult

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will it be to to you know develop this feature and is it going to be easy or is it going to be medium

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or is it going to be hard and developers are much better at doing that and having the conversation as

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a group around what constitutes easy medium and hard and and when that happens uh they get better at it

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when they have these conversations and uh and over time that's where tracker can kick in and help

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help help a team be predictive as to when stuff will get delivered um but you know when we've always

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we've seen when people start trying to guesstimate how long something will take it becomes it's it's

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much harder even though those two are very similar it's a fine line between talking about complexity

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because after a while people will know that okay well if i can do 10 points in a week and that breaks

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down to about two points a day then is 1.4 hours uh maybe but then you start falling into the trap of

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measuring in hours and we try we try we try and encourage you know we encourage people to avoid the

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whole tracking in time just tracking complexity and everything else will sort itself out yeah you know

379
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:51,120
as as you're going through this that it it it occurs to me that's a great phrase but uh you know i i'm i

380
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:56,240
i was wondering like i was using the phrase that the uh uh the pivotal way is very opinionated because

381
00:35:56,240 --> 00:36:04,000
people say that all the time and and to some extent uh it's almost not any more opinionated than

382
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:10,000
any other system and and in fact you might even think that like it has it only has a few like

383
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:15,520
strongly held opinions but everything else is basically like just figure it out which which is to say

384
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:20,960
as reflected in something like tracker um like i remember one of the last tools i used when i

385
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:29,040
developed software uh it had like i don't know 80 fields for a bug which which is pretty ridiculous

386
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:33,920
and and i might even joked about this here i mean it's sort of like to use a metaphor like those 80

387
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:39,200
fields were like if you read through your uh your house mortgage like every line or every sentence in

388
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:44,000
a mortgage is like a history of everything that's gone wrong with buying a house like it's very well

389
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:49,520
documented there and may not be appropriate for the current transaction anyways you're absolutely

390
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:52,400
right you're absolutely right i mean i just want to kind of say i mean i think that's that's that's

391
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:58,800
the the leap of faith i think that we ask of customers who get into agile is is as opinionated as people think

392
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:07,920
we are we are we asking you to be less opinionated and more opinionated about where things are going and

393
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:12,960
it's really stressful for a lot of people to not because to a certain degree you're trusting the

394
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:19,520
process and you have to under control it's like it's like under steering it's like it's like turning

395
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:23,360
into the curve when you're skidding on the road as opposed to turning away from it right it just doesn't

396
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:29,920
feel natural if you're new to agile but once you get into the groove it uh it it's surprisingly

397
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:34,880
powerful and liberating i know and and i think i think i think you you uh you're summarizing what i was

398
00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:41,280
thinking there in the sense of if if if you trust in the process let's say if you trust in the software

399
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:46,480
more than the meatware right and you trust the process is gonna do everything for you then you

400
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:51,920
would expect a project management tool to have a lot of fields and a lot of things right because

401
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:58,400
the job of the people in there is to fuel the process right to be kind of like the raw fire that

402
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:05,040
makes raw wood that makes the process fire go uh to be all emulation or emeloting or however you say

403
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:11,200
that there anyways but i i feel i feel like a lot of the opinions that that uh that we at pivotal have

404
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:17,840
and people in the agile world is like all the complexity is up in a person's head and so let's shift all the

405
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:22,320
complexity there right like the reliance is more and more on the meatware than the tools that you have

406
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:28,320
around it and so that's why there probably isn't like a 500 page manual somewhere and why there aren't

407
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:32,480
there isn't you know the so-called infinite configurability in something like tracker like

408
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:37,600
it really just focuses on a few fundamental things and everything else is just like done by the people

409
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:42,960
around it which i think i think to the point about uh uh there's probably some snappy title out there

410
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:48,480
like in search of certainty or something but once you sort of accept that like like most software uh

411
00:38:48,480 --> 00:38:54,000
certainty doesn't really enter the picture that it's more it's more like the uh the renaissance

412
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:58,240
like sort of phase of science where it was just like i don't know let's see what happens and

413
00:38:58,240 --> 00:39:04,240
hopefully i don't blow my face off or like but it's more about like setting in in place a process where

414
00:39:04,240 --> 00:39:09,440
you're learning and discovering things rather than just executing unknown things over and over again

415
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:14,400
having certainty and so you need you need tools that support that kind of uh that exploration and

416
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:18,880
i think i think the point system is a i don't know if it really fits to that view of things but it's

417
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:26,880
an interesting example of that where we don't have enough certainty to really over time accurately

418
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:33,920
predict time that things will take but we can kind of make up this thing called points that's sort of

419
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:39,040
like this overlay on reality that that helps us scope and size things and it gives us a very

420
00:39:39,040 --> 00:39:45,280
relativistic but still useful way of thinking about how big is this thing and therefore how big it is

421
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:50,720
determines how long probably we need to spend on it or more importantly the attention we need to pay

422
00:39:50,720 --> 00:39:55,040
to it and how we think about it through the process versus like oh this is a five-hour task this is

423
00:39:55,040 --> 00:40:01,120
a 15-hour task like that doesn't in internet in a process that has a lot of uncertainty in it

424
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:07,520
the amount of time it takes isn't extremely helpful for you well and i think at the end of the day you know

425
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:14,880
what tracker tries to do is just make teams be honest and have an honest conversation about what needs to

426
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:20,720
be done i think what you know the the main friction points in software development always come down to

427
00:40:20,720 --> 00:40:27,920
poor communication or poor articulation of direction or you know uh somebody not you know explaining what

428
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:32,000
what they wanted or what they manage or what what the what the what the hurdles are so i think at the end

429
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:38,080
of the day you know these point discussions it's not about how long it takes is it's how long do you

430
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:42,720
think how complex do you think this is and if you think it's a complex thing let's discuss it because

431
00:40:42,720 --> 00:40:48,400
then maybe i didn't realize how complex it was so you know we're all about breaking helping people

432
00:40:48,400 --> 00:40:53,040
break things down into manageable chunks because when you think about i'm going to launch this new app or this

433
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:58,800
crazy new thing a year from now and we're starting from scratch it can seem overwhelming and everything

434
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:03,200
is overwhelming right but it's the whole idea of like the a long journey starts with the first step

435
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:07,280
so how do you break it down into that first step and what are the first steps what's the next step

436
00:41:07,280 --> 00:41:13,200
what's the step after that and i think that that's where tracker really shines is that it really

437
00:41:13,200 --> 00:41:18,480
encourages people to be have honest conversations with each other about what needs to be done how

438
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:24,560
complex is it going to be and and over promising to you know product owners down the road that oh yes

439
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:30,880
we'll get this done really soon because i just told the team to do it so so uh you know i think it's uh

440
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:36,800
it's it's this honest communications tool that i think that that's where tracker shines really

441
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:40,480
and what makes us different and it's you know and it's also for everyone on the team

442
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:44,000
that's the other thing i find that a lot of these other product management tools are there's a product

443
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:48,480
management owner and you have to be certified and trained to be able to go in there and even massage

444
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:55,040
and coax it into performing the way you want it to perform and that's not tracker to that point so i

445
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:59,440
mean where do we who else do you see you know is this something you ever see teams have up on a board

446
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:04,640
where multiple teams are looking at it and you know beyond just hey dude you know you're talking about

447
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:09,440
with pivotal devs jump in and update stories and and jump into that is that where again you see you

448
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,400
you know you can only have it on his conversation if everyone's actually participating

449
00:42:12,400 --> 00:42:19,600
uh yeah i think so and otherwise you know people's yeah i think so i think so i think that you know

450
00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:24,720
that that's that's uh that's tracker's intent i mean there there's this is the team is going to be

451
00:42:24,720 --> 00:42:28,080
developing this then a team has to have a voice and a say and that's why we point as a team and

452
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:31,920
and stories are you know because we have the iteration planning meetings right you know at the

453
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,440
beginning of the week the team looks up the stories they're going to tackle this week they go through

454
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:40,640
them they talk to discuss them is that has any information come their way that has uh changed

455
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:46,800
what they believe is the complexity of of the individual story and also have new stories been

456
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:50,720
thrown into this week's workload that they weren't aware of and if that's the case how is that going

457
00:42:50,720 --> 00:42:56,080
to impact their release date that they may have in here but um you know so tracker is a very you know

458
00:42:56,880 --> 00:43:01,840
people dismiss as a lightweight tool as uh you know as a you know it's not a fully functioning

459
00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:06,400
aln tool i think at the end of the day what we challenge people to to assess is how complex of

460
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:14,160
a tool do you really need so and i think that that's where tracker you know has proven itself

461
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:20,640
you know year in year out is that people who like tracker realize this is enough otherwise the process

462
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:27,360
gets in the way of the app um anyway so you know i think you know i i i could bend your ear on this

463
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:31,920
forever uh but and tracker and and where where i think our strong suit is and i do think we're

464
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:37,760
different from a lot of other tools out there um but you know the future of trackers is is is very

465
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:43,120
bright and uh and right now we've been very focused on uh on small teams and startups and in that

466
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:49,120
environment but we are aware that we need to function uh better in a larger team environment larger

467
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:52,480
structures and that's where we're that's where we're going right now with you know working with the

468
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:59,280
circle of code and making sure we're we're we're pulling our weight in that environment and uh as

469
00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:05,040
well as uh you know for larger enterprises we've got to worry about single sign-on and uh infinite

470
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:10,880
project history and and things like that and you know better team management dashboards so that they

471
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:15,520
can add and remove people more easily um all these things that you know were not an issue for a much

472
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:20,960
smaller startup team and these are just some basic things that need to be done on just the managing

473
00:44:20,960 --> 00:44:26,800
the tool um but you know our hope is that well we'll add that layer of of sophistication for for

474
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:34,640
teams uh that the core tracker will be the same for for everyone so and then finally just keeping our

475
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:38,160
base happy i think that's going to be our that's our third point is that we have a very

476
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:44,400
fanatical is too strong of a word but we have a very loyal happy customer base and that's opinionated

477
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:50,000
themselves right we have an opinionated tool that has some very opinionated users and uh and we're

478
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:56,000
very mindful of you know uh keeping them happy and uh and i think that's also going to be another big

479
00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:00,320
push this year is is uh what is it that makes them really happy and how can we do a little more

480
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:06,400
of that so so before before we wrap up i i want to i want to get some free consulting here uh from from

481
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:13,040
you it's it's it's a bit of it's a bit of an abstract thing but uh so so i i uh i uh and i'll try to make

482
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:17,680
it a shave dog instead of a shaggy dog lead up to it but like you know i i stopped doing development in

483
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:23,600
like 2006 and uh i i'd always been a programmer my professional life and i just like learned that from

484
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:29,360
high school and then i went into like the white collar world right so so just envision right like i i'd

485
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:34,160
learned how to do project management and fit in with a team and like deliver on something as a

486
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:40,240
software developer and then i go into uh let's call it the white collar world right like of excel and

487
00:45:40,240 --> 00:45:46,720
word and mbas and like it always struck me that they do pretty much absolutely no project management

488
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:52,720
right like there's no like when you move into this area there's not really like there might be like a

489
00:45:52,720 --> 00:45:58,320
gantt chart and there might be like a weekly status meeting with the vp that has some powerpoint

490
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:03,840
slides in it with like the christmas tree status for stuff and so like you know me and some other

491
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:08,480
like troublemaking colleagues were always trying to pull in some project management from the developer

492
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:13,840
world right and then along i think more recently towards the end of the 2000s along came like all

493
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:19,040
this kanban stuff and like cards and stuff and and we would try to introduce that and you know long

494
00:46:19,040 --> 00:46:25,360
story short like i have never really seen at least in my experience which is totally anecdotal based on me

495
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:34,000
like very rigorous thorough project management outside of like the engineering world and so i'm i'm more

496
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:41,360
interested in in in your take on this like like it seems like it would be useful because because a lot

497
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:45,600
of you know there's there's some white collar work that you do which is just like gather the information

498
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:51,440
put together the tps reports like do the stuff like we could basically call it the robots haven't

499
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:58,560
taken your job yet uh category of things uh but then a lot of it is like really open-ended uncertain

500
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:03,680
things right like so we came up with a new product and we need to figure out how to convince people they

501
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:09,440
should buy it like you can't really write a program to do that like it's it's it's an iterative process

502
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:15,680
as well and so i wonder in your uh in your like adventures and tracker if you've if you've seen

503
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:21,600
like like in the outside of the development world like how do people react to it and like does it apply

504
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:25,680
outside of that world or like how can we get all these white collar people to like get their act

505
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:35,280
together and do some proper project management better um it's it's not possible all right well

506
00:47:35,280 --> 00:47:42,560
no no no yeah there you go shutting off a lot of wasted time is a good answer right to it no you

507
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:47,600
know i think that at the end of the day i think you know it's because okay so you know the pivotal

508
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:53,120
tracker marketing team uses pivotal tracker to manage projects and it's it's a struggle as you said

509
00:47:53,120 --> 00:47:56,080
sometimes we have these open-ended stories that you know require

510
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:02,800
tracker is a very linear product you know and it says and it's really optimized for software

511
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:07,440
development teams and the idea is that you know you you you work your way down the backlog you start

512
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:11,200
at the top of the list and you work your way down the list because the product owner the product

513
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:18,400
manager has done a great job of organizing and grooming what we call it back and and so uh it's take

514
00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:22,720
the top story do it go on the next they're going to the butcher shop right i'm taking i'm you know

515
00:48:22,720 --> 00:48:27,920
taking that tag taking that number taking the next number and um and and while that might sound a

516
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:35,600
bit mechanical that's just the process but the the developers devour those stories yeah uh and uh

517
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:38,480
and uh and it's you know and they've had discussions about it they have meetings about

518
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,960
it before and at the end of the week and and just it's a process that works really well because they

519
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:48,400
can just you know put their nose down and just and just tear through these things because all the

520
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:52,720
conversations that they need to have have already happened and they they know exactly what needs to

521
00:48:52,720 --> 00:48:57,520
be done and if there's any issues conversations can happen in there so trackers optimized for that i

522
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:02,960
think for people where they need to get an approval from a third party and it just it gets more complex

523
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:07,600
and it breaks down i think that there's you know if somebody we have a great api we have a wonderful api

524
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:15,840
if somebody wants to take tracker and reskin it and and and optimize it for an other industry like maybe

525
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:20,640
you know another vertical industry maybe like legal or something else i think there might be some

526
00:49:20,640 --> 00:49:30,880
interesting things um maybe a slightly modified process um and i don't think tracker as of yet has any

527
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:36,080
plans to to to go that route yeah you know i i think it's hard i i think you're hitting on one of the

528
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:42,000
the the the fundamental road blocks for me wanting to apply a developer project management mindset to

529
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:46,320
the white collar world which is and and i don't think it's uncurable it's just there's a lot of

530
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:52,640
work to do is is developers are taught very early on to break things into the smallest unit possible

531
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:59,280
and and sort of like spend a lot of time up front more or less or and you start internalizing this

532
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:03,680
but you break it into little units that are doable that hook up together you know like i hate this

533
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:09,120
metaphor but metaphoric lego blocks or whatever whereas whereas it also strikes me that the mindset

534
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:13,920
that a lot of uh we can pick on marketing but a lot of just as one example i mean it could be

535
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:21,840
marketing or finance or hr or whatever but in all these other non-development uh disciplines they don't

536
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:26,880
really break things into small chunks routinely like they might stumble upon it and do it but it's not

537
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:32,000
like a part doing components is not an issue of it and then so therefore yeah you know as you're going

538
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:37,120
over it like yeah you would end up with these story cards that were basically like q4 messaging

539
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:45,200
right and you're just like what what does that even mean so uh yeah that that is that is a uh i don't

540
00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:48,720
know maybe we need to get back to the fundamentals and i i totally hear you

541
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:56,960
i know one last anecdote and i and i and we can call it quits but there are developers that uh that

542
00:50:56,960 --> 00:51:02,800
have used tracker to for example renovate their house right work with contractors and and and that's a

543
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:06,800
somewhat linear project but at the end of the day you know that they get their spouses involved with

544
00:51:06,800 --> 00:51:11,360
with pivotal tracker and they try and track everything through there and i'm like i feel so sorry for the

545
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:16,960
relationship if they have to inflict their thinking on their partner and their contractor it's it's a

546
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:22,000
nice thought uh and and we're very happy to support that because we're free for up to three people

547
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:27,680
right so tracker is definitely you know go to town do these small projects do whatever you want but uh

548
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:35,040
but um it's uh you're on your own is all i guess well i i think i think i think to summarize this this

549
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:41,280
topic it's uh you know using uh project management for your wedding makes a great medium

550
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:48,640
post but probably not a happy spouse like you just you just want to avoid that so exactly on on on that

551
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:52,640
note well thanks thanks for being a guest on this episode where where can people if people want to

552
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:58,960
check out tracker or learn more about it where where should they go uh two well two obvious sites one is

553
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:03,760
pivotaltracker.com uh and sign up the first month is free but we're free for up to three users and

554
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:09,680
definitely and we're also free for dot edus and dot orgs uh so and we have public projects so we have

555
00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:14,240
plenty of ways to use tracker and then also you can find us on the pivotal.io site if you go to uh

556
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:20,000
the little dot io you can find us either on the footer or under the the labs heading in the main

557
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:26,080
navigation so uh so yeah give us a shot give us a and then you know any questions reach out to us

558
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:30,480
we have a great great support team that's super responsive and and are you uh are you in twitter

559
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:36,160
or anything like that that you want to throw out uh at pivotaltracker.com it's a great way to to

560
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:41,200
reach us and ask us questions and and uh yeah that's that's our main avenue on the social media

561
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:46,480
well that sounds great well as always this has been Pivotal Conversations thanks for listening if

562
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:52,800
if you deign and have the time to go uh either send us a comment i'm uh i'm Coté c-o-t-e in twitter

563
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:56,880
and and richard is our seroter you can you can write something to us or you could even

564
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:02,080
go super fancy and leave us a rating or review in itunes that would be nice oh boy just like

565
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:06,640
make our day we'd we'd be done for the week just spend the rest of the day off because we'd be so

566
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:12,880
amazed but you know uh i i think i think as always you know whether we're recounting uh what we've

567
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:18,480
seen at conferences from towers of dungeness crabs to exciting powerpoints we'll be here and you can

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find us at pivotal.io slash podcast or if you go to soundcloud you can find us at soundcloud.com

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slash Pivotal Conversations and in itunes and everywhere else out there and as always thanks

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for listening and we'll see you next time