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Last active February 18, 2020 01:17
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Pivotal Tracker FAQ
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tracker.md

TLDR

  • Stories are the beginning of a conversation. It's not a bad idea to chat with the PM when picking up each story to ensure you understand their intentions. Same thing goes for the designs. Never hesitate to chat with the PM/Designer during the delivery of a story to get clarification or propose alternatives that are easier or better.
  • The order or stories in Tracker is set intentionally by the PM. Please pick up the stories one at a time in order.
  • Generally, there should not be multiple started stories with the same owner. If you believe you are in an exception case chat with the PM before picking up a second story.

Index

Quick Start

What do I work on next?

The stories are placed in a priority order by the PM based on a balance of user, business, and technical needs. The highest un-blocked story in the backlog is the one you should pick up next. If you are unsure that this is the right choice, talk to the PM! They'll be happy to explain why it has been given its relative priority.

What if my next story is blocked?

If the next story is blocked and it is marked as blocked already, and you cannot resolve the blocker, leave it in its current state and move on to the next story you can work on. If the story is not marked as blocked, add a blocker (just above the story description), set the story to unstarted and move on to the next story you can work on.

Tips for making Blockers helpful

  • Make them actionable (eg 'Invoice example document needs to be provided by client').
  • If the blocking work is captured in a story/bug/chore put the story id in the blocker description with a note and it will use the status of the blocking story/bug/chore to determine if the story is still blocked (eg '#2200234 - need environment stood up before continuing'). Story ids globaly identify stories, and are found just under the story title.

Concepts

What is a Story? An Epic?

  • An epic is a feature that can be broken into a set of smaller features, or user stories. (eg 'dealer can manage their eBay sales') All epics (and progress towards them) can be viewed by clicking the shield icon on the left bar.
  • A story is a single, generally user facing, small component of work that is captured in a description for a developer to deliver (eg 'User can link their eBay credentials').

Feature vs. Chore vs. Bug

Tracker provides three flavors of stories:

  • Feature: a feature is a user story that adds business value to the product. These are created and prioritized by the PM.
  • Bug: a bug represents a regression in a feature. These are created by anyone on the team, and prioritized by the PM.
  • Chore: a chore represents a development task that does not visibly add value to the product. These are created by the development team and prioritized by the development team in collaboration with the PM.

What are tasks?

Usually Tasks are used as a list of implementation details that fulfill the story.

I recomend beginning each story by capturing in tasks all the expected work that will need to be completed to finish a story. This helps keep you focused as you proceed through development. As new things are discovered throughout the work you can capture them as subsequent tasks, or drag them around to a priority order as needed. This way you can be sure to not forget anything that is important, but you also do not need to be sidetracked by tackling it right away.

If a task is a large amount of stand alone work (either development chore like refactoring or backfilling tests, or an individually deliverable user facing feature) it is often a good idea to capture it in its own story.

Requester vs. Owner

  • Requester: the original story creater. For features this is often the PM (although developers can create story drafts and add them to the icebox for the PM's attention). For chores this is often a developer.
  • Owner: the individual(s) who is coordinating the completion of the story. This is the individual who is coordinating team members to get all the necessary components delivered. The owner can change throughout the life of a story if responsibility is handed off to a new developer.

More Detail

What is the life of a story?

  • Stories often begin their life in an unstarted state in the Icebox.
  • When the PM decides the story is ready to be worked on they will move the story into the Backlog.
  • When a developer has finished their previous story, they will click Start on the next available story in the backlog.
  • The developer will proceed to create the requested feature, while conversing with the designer and PM for added context.
  • Once the feature is complete the developer will press Finish.
  • Now the feature is ready to be pushed to the test environments. This can include development environments, and QA environments (in order).
  • Once the feature has passed testing, deploy the code to the UAT environment. Press Deliver once it has finished deploying.
  • The PM will then manually test the feature in the UAT environment, and if it meets the acceptance criteria they will click Accept. The story is now Done.
  • If the feature does not meet the acceptance criteria, the PM will click Reject, and add a clarifying comment.
  • Now the developer can Restart the story and begin from the top.

What if I have questions about the story?

Recommended steps:

  • Walk over to the PM and ask them, or ask them over Slack
    If the PM cannot be reached:
    • Post a comment/question/request for clarification in the story that tags the pm using @
    • Add a needs pm tag to the story
  • If the answer is given outside of Tracker, post a comment summarizing the result of the conversation for future reference

What if I have questions about the design?

Recommended steps:

  • Walk over to the designer and ask them, or ask them over Slack
    If the designer cannot be reached:
    • Post a comment/question/request for clarification in the story that tags the pm using @
    • Add a needs design tag to the story
  • If the answer is given outside of Tracker, post a comment summarizing the result of the conversation for future reference

What are labels?

We usually use labels to capture a few things:

  • the epic that this story is working towards
  • common blockers, specifically needs pm or needs design
  • releases that a story is going to be a part of (eg v0.0.12)

What if a story is missing?

There are a few steps to take:

  • Place a draft story at the top of the Icebox. Usually the PM will have a section marked as an Inbox for this purpose. Idenfity the story as a draft by pre-pending the proposed title with '[DRAFT]'. (eg '[DRAFT] Users should be able to compare products')
  • Complete the story description with as much detail as you can provide.
  • Talk to the PM in person or over Slack to make them aware of the story you added to the icebox and your intention for what will be captured in that story. There's a possibility the PM already has that work captured somewhere.

Tips and Tricks

  • Download Red Labels for Pivotal Tracker Chrome/Firefox plugin to get higher visibility tags for commonly used blocking tags.
  • There are Github and Bitbucket integrations for Tracker that tie commits to story ids. These are useful when going back to see what was done and why.
  • Story ids globaly identify stories. If your story id is '2200234' there will be no other Tracker story on any project with that same id. This means you can safely use that story id anywhere to reference that specific story. Usually we prepend the id with a hash (eg #2200234). You can then link that directly to the story with this url https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/2200234.

External Links

  • Take a look at this short video that gives an overview of Pivotal Tracker Concepts!

Future Topics

  • What should I expect to see in a story description?
  • What are Points?
  • What is Velocity?
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