Pivotal Tracker is an agile project management software designed to help teams organize their work around user stories, managing features, bugs, and technical tasks. Built for product and development teams, it supports iteration-based planning, automatic scheduling based on team velocity, and includes tools for collaboration, task tracking, and performance analysis.

What are the main features of Pivotal Tracker?

Structuring projects around stories for agile and flexible management

Pivotal Tracker is based on a story-centric approach, enabling teams to break down projects into clear, actionable, and estimable units of work.

• Story creation by type: features, bugs, and chores (technical tasks).
• User-focused story descriptions to clarify business needs.
• Collaborative complexity estimation using customizable point scales (e.g., 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8).
• Prioritization through drag-and-drop within iteration backlogs.
• Dependency management via story blockers to identify and surface project obstacles.

Automatic planning and velocity management

Pivotal Tracker uses a continuous planning system based on actual team capacity to avoid unrealistic deadlines and improve delivery predictability.

• Automatic velocity calculation based on the average points completed in recent iterations.
• Automatic distribution of stories into future iterations according to measured velocity.
• Real-time tracking of story status (to do, in progress, done) and projected delivery dates.
• Iteration-based workflow management with dynamic adjustments according to team progress.

Multi-project coordination and individual workload tracking

Tracker supports simultaneous management of multiple projects and consolidated task views for individuals.

• Multi-project workspaces: display multiple projects side-by-side and move stories between projects.
• "My Work" dashboard: consolidated list of all assigned stories across projects for individual task tracking.
• Cross-project search using advanced boolean logic queries.

Performance monitoring and analytics

Tracker includes integrated analytics tools to monitor progress and identify issues.

• Project overview pages with key trends and velocity tracking.
• Visual reports:
  • Burnup charts to monitor progress toward goals.
  • Cumulative flow diagrams to analyze work-in-progress trends.
  • Cycle time reports to measure task completion speed.
• Detailed breakdown by iteration, epics, and releases for fine-grained delivery tracking.
• Bottleneck and slowdown detection through issue aging analysis.

Built-in collaboration and story-level information sharing

Tracker supports team collaboration and communication around tasks with embedded tools.

• Mentions and story following for notifications and team engagement.
• Checklists to manage subtasks within stories.
• File attachments: upload designs, documents, and supporting files (drag-and-drop or via Google Drive).
• Configurable notifications for updates (email or mobile).
• Complete project history to track all actions and decisions over time.

API and integrations to extend functionality

Tracker is extensible through a comprehensive API and connects with many third-party tools to fit specific workflows.

• REST API to create custom integrations and automations.
• Native integrations, including:
  • GitHub: automatic linking of branches, pull requests, and commits to stories.
  • Slack, Zendesk, Zapier for communication and ticketing system connections.
• App directory with over 140 third-party integrations developed by the community.

Appvizer’s opinion

Pivotal Tracker is a well-suited tool for agile teams looking to organize work around well-defined and trackable user stories. Its core strength lies in its ability to automatically plan iterations based on actual team velocity, reducing manual scheduling and aligning expectations with real team capacity.

The adaptive iteration system is particularly useful for maintaining a sustainable pace and ensuring continuous delivery. The software strikes a good balance between simplicity and depth, offering clear story-centric management alongside powerful analytics, collaboration, and integration tools.

However, Pivotal Tracker is primarily built for product and development teams following structured agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, hybrid). Organizations needing broader portfolio management, Gantt-based planning, or long-term roadmapping may find the tool less suited for those use cases compared to more portfolio-oriented solutions.

Pivotal Tracker is particularly well-suited for:

• Product and development teams (small to medium size).
• Startups and scale-ups with established agile practices.
• Tech organizations seeking a story and iteration-centric workflow without unnecessary complexity.