[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Pivotal Tracker removes non-enterprise pric...
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Tell HN: Pivotal Tracker removes non-enterprise price tiers
Just got this email from VMware re Pivotal Tracker: To our Pivotal
Tracker customers, Effective March 31, 2024, Pivotal Tracker
"Startup" and "Standard" subscriptions will no longer be available
for purchase and yearly auto-renewals will be canceled. Going
forward, Pivotal Tracker will only be available for purchase as an
"Enterprise" subscription. If you are interested in purchasing an
"Enterprise" subscription to continue your Pivotal Tracker access,
more information can be found here. You will continue to have
access to Pivotal Tracker until your yearly subscription expires.
Upon expiration of your subscription you will be given 60 days
access at no charge to ensure you have time to migrate any needed
data, please review the download instructions here. Regards, Tanzu
Division
Author : tempestn
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-03-05 18:47 UTC (4 hours ago)
| tempestn wrote:
| We've got a great workflow with Pivotal, and a ton of data in
| there, especially completed stories for reference. Seems like a
| price gouge for folks like us for whom switching would be
| painful.
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| The entire VMware rugpull of all subscriptions is a huge dick
| move. I hope they eat a bag of dicks and go under entirely.
| NeoTar wrote:
| I think you can blame Broadcom now.
| wrs wrote:
| Well, people have had that sentiment about Oracle even longer
| than Broadcom, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for either
| of them.
| anticorporate wrote:
| Unfortunately correct. But personally, I won't even entertain
| an Oracle solution with my department's budget because of
| this. I wish more IT decision makers would do the same.
| wrs wrote:
| I hear you. I canceled our Dyn contract when they were
| acquired and let them know why. Unfortunately it isn't
| always so easy to switch.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because they're eating _enterprise_ dicks, and there 's _big
| money_ in them there bags.
| wrl wrote:
| Rough. PT's "automatic" sprint planning and velocity measurement
| has always been a killer feature for me as a solo user. Even if
| the free plan isn't going away immediately, the writing's on the
| wall.
|
| Anybody know of other task/project management software that has
| similar automatic velocity measurement and sprint planning
| functionality? It does so much for my productivity that I might
| just build something myself if there's nothing else around.
| geoelectric wrote:
| Yeah, if it doesn't already exist this could be the forcing
| function. I know a lot of people like that functionality you
| describe.
| namdnay wrote:
| Back in my enterprise days I remember getting decent results
| with the Portfolio add-on to JIRA. Like all things JIRA it's a
| bit heavy and slow, but full of features
| esher wrote:
| Linear has something velocity like:
| https://linear.app/docs/project-graph - I am not using it and I
| don't know how it compares to PT.
| wrl wrote:
| This is interesting but misses the real killer PT feature:
| closing the loop between velocity and planning:
|
| 1. Tasks have points 2. Sprints have duration 3. Points
| accomplished per sprint is velocity 4. Use the average
| velocity of the past few sprints to pull some number of tasks
| off the top of the backlog. Those are the tasks for the next
| sprint.
|
| It makes sprint planning basically transparent. I just
| prioritise the backlog (sometimes lazily) and it keeps me
| pretty productive. It's almost gamification in a way, but not
| quite.
| oliviabenson wrote:
| If you have a prioritised backlog and you're working in
| priority order then there's not much value in sprints -- is
| there? Sprints provide value when you can't just churn
| through tickets one after the other in priority order.
| Sprint planning is time consuming because sprints are
| useful when you need to plan.
|
| You could use Linear's cycles and milestones but you
| probably don't need any of that structure if you're just
| working ticket by ticket.
| latchkey wrote:
| PT automatically adjusts the number of stories that make
| it into a sprint. They don't really have a concept of
| sprint actually... it is just average velocity over time
| and the number of stories that can fit into that average.
|
| If a PM wants to see how adding in just one more feature
| impacts the schedule, they can just drag the pointed
| story into the queue and see what gets pushed out to the
| next week.
|
| If a developer goes on vacation, it is easy to see how
| that impacts the schedule cause you can subtract their
| average velocity.
|
| Most people don't understand this killer feature of PT
| unless they've actually spent a bunch of time using it.
| It really enables you to do accurate project estimates,
| if you do it right.
|
| Source: worked for cloudfoundry/pivotallabs
| nurettin wrote:
| I never liked their velocity diagram. I've had situations where
| I had great progress when it showed low, and I had situations
| when bugs and setbacks made the "velocity" measure meaningless.
| You can even inflate it with lots of "important" little tasks.
|
| It's just a bad metric to optimize for.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Almost all metrics are bad to optimise for. If you don't use
| it skillfully it won't work. Even if you do, it's a guide at
| best.
| sigden wrote:
| Anyone have any details on enterprise pricing?
| tempestn wrote:
| I've emailed them, but don't have a reply yet. Presumably
| they're a bit inundated at the moment.
|
| Took me a few attempts writing it before I managed an
| appropriately civil tone. Ended up venting my frustration
| cryptically instead, by including a pic of the Enterprise D in
| the footer.
| teeray wrote:
| Likely xx% of your predicted revenue.
| bombcar wrote:
| Someone should make a website that just lists basic pricing for
| various tiers of companies that try to hide it.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| It could be a SaaS, and when you go to the pricing page it
| doesn't tell you the price, but you can set up a sales call.
| tempestn wrote:
| Please create that landing page. I'd love to see that hit
| the homepage here.
| tempestn wrote:
| Anyone have recommendations for alternatives that would require
| minimal adjustment for someone accustomed to Pivotal? From a
| quick glance ClickUp or Monday.com look ok maybe? JIRA is
| obviously common but presumably would have a large learning
| curve. Asana?
|
| Also while Pivotal does offer an export, most alternatives don't
| appear to import from it. Though maybe that will change with
| this. And I suppose a middleman could be used.
| tempestn wrote:
| Linear actually looks quite good, but I'm a bit afraid of
| committing to a smaller option now and ending up with another
| rugpull.
| ljm wrote:
| I can recommend Linear. Very nice UX.
|
| I think the higher level project stuff is a little bit
| lacking, especially on the reporting side, but it's
| definitely a leaner option than the incumbents.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| We switched from PT to Linear and couldn't be happier.
| tempestn wrote:
| Were you able to import your data? Directly or through
| another app?
| webwielder2 wrote:
| I wasn't directly involved in importation, but AFAIK it
| went pretty smoothly: https://linear.app/docs/import-
| issues#pivotal-tracker
| 2bitlobster wrote:
| Happy shortcut.com user here, used pivotal for years
| previously. I use it for my small engineering team.
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| I've previously moved from Pivotal to Shortcut (when it was
| still called Clubhouse) and found it to be a good alternative
| for our small team. I did end up having to write my own import
| scripts, though that only took an evening or two.
| threeseed wrote:
| > JIRA is obviously common but presumably would have a large
| learning curve
|
| Out of the box it is quite simple. Complexity comes from
| companies doing a lot of customisation.
|
| Plus it's free up to 10 users.
| tempestn wrote:
| Yeah, I'm actually leaning toward giving it a try since we're
| on Bitbucket already. Might do a limited trial while we still
| have Pivotal access so we only have to do a full migration
| once.
| malyk wrote:
| Shortcut maybe? It's definitely not the same exactly and I
| haven't used PL in a ton of years, but I think it works pretty
| well overall. The general organization is Milestones -> Epics
| -> Iterations -> Stories
| vhodges wrote:
| As others have said, Linear looks nice (no real experience).
| https://plane.so/ is an open source option that I have also not
| played with.
|
| I am always on the lookout for options since we're on Jira at
| $DAYJOB (and yeah it sucks), not that we'll ever change.
| tempestn wrote:
| I keep hearing that Jira sucks, but I've also heard from some
| that it only sucks if you make it suck: that it's basically
| PMs adding a bunch of unnecessary steps and box-ticking and
| such that makes it painful to use. What would you say, having
| looked at multiple options?
| neilv wrote:
| > _Upon expiration of your subscription you will be given 60 days
| access at no charge to ensure you have time to migrate any needed
| data, please review the download instructions here._
|
| You don't disrupt customer businesses like this just because you
| want to eliminate their pricing tier.
|
| A more likely way to handle that situation is to grandfather in
| the current subscribers (for a _much_ longer period), and only
| disallow new subscribers at that tier.
| bombcar wrote:
| You do if you want to make the big enterprise money with little
| cost.
|
| Grandfathering in is nice, but it really just pulls the bandage
| off slower in the long run.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm sure it makes bottom-line business sense, if you want to
| be enterprise-only.
|
| (You'll alienate numerous small companies and startups, who
| will never buy a VMware product again, but only a small
| percentage of those will grow enough to become enterprise
| customers.)
|
| A slow bandage pull in this case means giving giving a large
| window, for the customer to migrate on customer's own
| timeline, such as after completion of projects using the
| tool.
| bombcar wrote:
| The sad reality is that if a company "makes it" they'll buy
| from vendors they swore they'd never touch again - if it
| makes sense at the time.
|
| This is why the big vendors continue to exist. Sucks for
| us, but that's life.
| neilv wrote:
| I, for one, know how to hold a grudge.
|
| Also, seems like the reputability of the vendor should be
| a factor in vendor selection. Why would one willingly use
| a vendor with an apparent mindset of "screw you, the
| moment it makes sense for me"?
|
| (Maybe because a decision-maker didn't expect to
| personally be on the hook if the vendor also screws their
| company, in the same well-known ways it's screwed others?
| If screwing happens before the decision-maker moves on:
| "I'm shocked; shocked! Who could have foreseen this
| costly mess?")
| nashashmi wrote:
| Only a good company does to its good customers. When a company
| gets acquired, they dont treat the acquired customers like they
| are good customers.
| sanity wrote:
| Boy do I regret recommending Pivotal Tracker to people over the
| years, imagine doing something like this to paying customers -
| nasty.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| How far the great have fallen...this is likely the death knell
| for all things Pivotal. It was good while it lasted.
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(page generated 2024-03-05 23:01 UTC)