Help me find a replacement for my project task tracker
December 14, 2024 7:35 AM

I've been using Pivotal Tracker for the past decade plus, but it's shutting down in a few months so I need to find a replacement.

The thing I like about Pivotal is:

I can simply and quickly enter a task to do, assign some "points" (roughly representing units of time) and then check it off as done, in that order. It keeps track of what I've done, total points, as well as average "velocity":

Screenshot

Besides keeping track of what I have to do, the point/velocity system is a good motivator as it encourages me to keep the numbers up. Simplicity, clarity, and speed are main criteria.

Ideally, a replacement would let me upload a CSV of prior tasks so I could import my whole history for my current project.

Thanks!
posted by justkevin to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
I know I have seen a lot of posts recommending Todoist. However, I have never used it. I use Joplin (a free version of Evernote but that would be overkill for you). Granted, I do not see a point system on their Web page which may be a deal breaker for you.

You just didn't mention having looked at Todoist so I figured you could review their Web page while waiting for other/better answers.
posted by forthright at 8:40 AM on December 14


Linear is really nice, it's well designed so that using it can be very quick/effortless.
posted by so fucking future at 9:19 AM on December 14


I do use Todoist and can’t think of how to add points — just poked around in the settings and there are lots of calendar options but not so much the equivalent of hours-per, that I can find.
posted by clew at 11:09 AM on December 14


Amazing Marvin has a strategy (these are essentially options/features you can turn on and off) to add reward points. I don't know if it calculates anything like "velocity" though I know it has a lot of strategies used to keep track of how much progress you're making, I just don't use any of them myself. Marvin is simple to enter tasks and has a number of shortcuts for adding more information (tags, category, priority, etc.) as you're typing. It has a lot of features but you can turn basically everything off to make it as simple as you like.

You can also upload a CSV to import tasks.

My only, only complaint about Marvin is that their phone app kind of sucks. But if you're only using it on a computer, it's perfect.
posted by brook horse at 11:39 AM on December 14


Todoist does let you time-block tasks for arbitrary lengths of time if you put them on your calendar. So I could create a task by typing "Water plants every Monday at 7am for 15min" and it would stick it in the right place when I go into a calendar view that's similar to the Outlook weekly view. I think this feature might only be available to paid subscribers, though, and that it became available in the last year or so.

Another option with Todoist would be to co-opt the priority color-coding (red, orange, blue, grey) to map to rough task durations. (I've co-opted priority as a code for how emotionally draining tasks are--if something is red, that means it's stressful enough that it's going to be the biggest thing I get done that day, and I'd prefer not to have more than three of those per week, even if they only nominally take an hour each.)
posted by aincandenza at 2:19 PM on December 14


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