Comments on: Inside Pivotal Labs, the Agile Force Behind Twitter and Groupon

By: Pivotal Labs – Development Team Incubator « Javapath

Pivotal Labs – Development Team Incubator « Javapath — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:35:39 +0000

[...] Their list of clients include Twitter, GoWalla and Groupon. Take a look at the video and related article from [...]

By: Seph

Seph — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:27:08 +0000

We use Pivotal Tracker everyday. It’s awesome.

By: Jae

Jae — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 17:05:51 +0000

To build on Clay’s comment below, I can also see how people may read this article as a “sponsored” corporate speak.

I’m the founder/CEO of goBalto (mentioned in the article above) and came to Pivotal initially because we were looking to build out our product in the shortest amount of time possible. Coming from a non-engineering background, I was initially skeptical of their approach towards pairing, access to ping pong tables and early departures (6pm) from the office. Particularly given how much we were spending on them!

However, after being their client for 3 months, I am a convert. The environment they foster is highly productive and in the end has provided us with a higher quality product. Plus, their processes simply work.

The only caveat I would give anyone to working with someone like Pivotal, is to ensure you have done your customer development upfront. Ideally, you would want to have achieved Problem to Solution fit (or close to it). This way, you can leverage Pivotal’s core skills in building great applications, versus churning on wireframes and designs.

Just my 2 cents.

By: Drew McManus

Drew McManus — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 03:29:25 +0000

I’ve worked closely with Pivotal Labs for over 4 years, both as a partner and a client. I can’t say enough good about them. We’ve partnered to bring a number of apps (web and mobile) to life. Great guys who do some really great work.

By: Top Posts — WordPress.com

Top Posts — WordPress.com — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 00:20:07 +0000

[...] Inside Pivotal Labs, the Agile Force Behind Twitter and Groupon Pivotal Labs is a name that comes up often in regards to web startups, but it’s sort of an enigma. The [...] [...]

By: jon

jon — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:39:16 +0000

I thought it was a very interesting post and video. I’ve used Pivotal Tracker and knew they were involved with Diaspora, so it’s great to hear this kind of background. It would have been nice to explore the point about Twitter in more detail, for example hearing more about some decisions that look wrong in retrospect and what the learnings are, or getting their take on what Twitter’s new CEO should do to improve quality and security. Oh well, maybe next time. Still Pivotal’s got a great track record so it’s not surprising that this should be so glowing.

By: Liz Gannes

Liz Gannes — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 15:12:42 +0000

It’s not a sponsored post, it’s just a story I thought was worth telling.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:48:23 +0000

Very interesting reading!

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By: rbpasker

rbpasker — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:23:23 +0000

pivotal rocks. maybe it sounds like a “sponsored post” because its so glowing, but every word is true.

By: Clay Shentrup

Clay Shentrup — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 05:06:52 +0000

Les,

I can understand your point of view, but as an engineer on a team that became a client of Pivotal Lab’s less than two weeks ago, and all I can say is that the work ethic and culture that Pivotal Labs promotes is very relevant to lots of people in the startup world. Particularly if they are fans of hot technologies like Ruby on Rails.

A lot of the things I say to my friends about my experience at Pivotal Labs probably sound almost like a verbal form of sponsored ad. But it’s just because it’s very exciting and inspiring to work in that kind of environment. You come in right before 9am, and there’s always a great breakfast for you to eat. You have a company-wide standup and learn from problems and solutions proposed by lots of really smart people. You find a new person to pair with, and then you pair ALL DAY. You barely check email or stray from your task. You stay focused and engaged, and learn a ton. You write tests for essentially all the functionality you create. (As Ian McFarland says, you test “anything that can break.”) A few times throughout the day, you take a quick break to play ping pong, and you take a 1-hour lunch. At 6pm, you go home. Virtually no “overtime” or late nights or working on the weekend. You get to watch cool tech talks during lunch (every Wednesday, I believe).

Check out what Twitter had to say about their experience at Pivotal:
http://blog.twitter.com/2009/03/pivotal-means-of-crucial-importance.html