Another “tool” I used before I opted for surgery was the patt strap.

These are stretchy foam like bands that you wrap around your leg. The picture above shows it wraped over the patella tendon, but I used to wrap mine about 1″ above the top of the patella.
Supposedly, for ITBS, wrapping tightly 1″ above the knee puts enough pressure on the ITB to move the pressure point off the bony protrusion on the lateral aspect of the knee and therefore reduces/eliminates ITBS pain.

You have to get it pretty tight, and then they tend to roll a bit. These are generally more used for ITBS or patella tendonitis than for patella tracking issues, but I think I had a little bit of both going on.

I used these for a few months, sometimes just for the 1st 15 or 20 minutes of a run, and then would take them off. (They’d start to irritate me since I had to put them on so tight!) At 1st I tested these vs. the shields brace, but eventually started using these straps exclusively, as they were less likely to cause the patella to rub the femur like when I applied the shields brace buttress improperly. I could also wear these while biking, unlike the shields brace.

I eventually stopped using these straps as well as I neared and then reached my plateau of running 30 – 40 minutes and biking 60 minutes.

/Sean