State0 Blog

*BGP* on flickr

I have been using Pivotal Tracker to manage a project I have been tinkering at recently. Pivotal Tracker does not track time (directly). It tracks how many points teams can muster in a single iteration (period of time). Teams only get points for stories (tasks) that are features, not bugs or chores. This helps teams focus on the work that adds value. It also does predictive scheduling based on how fast teams work and the order of stories in their queue. It is a cool Agile tool. However, it is not the awesome agility of Pivotal Tracker that I am enjoying most; it’s the points. I love points! Everything in life is better with points. Moreover, you can add points to anything. Driving, cooking, shopping, exercise…

If I cannot find a rational reason for why someone should do something for me, I usually offer them some arbitrary number of points. Often, even if there is a rational reason, I still need points to get them moving. It works like magic. For example: 

• Useful - “I will give you 100 points if you make me a sandwich also.”
• Daring - “I don’t know, but you will probably get 1M  points if you can hurdle that bench on the first attempt.”
• Humorous - “I will give you a rare 32k points if you poop on that.”
• Networked - “Tom, will you give Jerry 15 points if he organizes an intervention to stop Mitch from beating Timmy so often at Wii Boxing?”

When we added points to our tours at BarZ, it doubled (maybe trippled) the value of the product. It is a visible difference. Users smile when they take tours with points. They tell people about their score and laugh when they do things that cost them points. All that for the price of a few points a tour. 

If you step back, way back, you will see that points are as good as money if not better. They are equally as arbitrary as a flipped bit on a bank computer, only lacking an arbiter, for now at least. If I told you that you could have as much money as you wanted would you save it all up or would you spend it? 

What are you doing right now that you could improve by adding points?