Portfolio Timeline

[Raphael Nash]

I have.a question about some wierdness I am seeing in the Portfolio Timeline.  For some reason it instists on starting the timeline on 1/1/2019, no matter what I do.  Also I can not see any initiatives past 7/1/2021.  I am trying to forecast out a 6 year project and this is stopping me.

[Gwen Gelsinon]

Hi Raphel,

Hello. Sorry to hear that limitation on the Portfolio Timeline is not allowing you to accomplish what you need to do. That Feature scopes the maximum displayed timeframe using today as a midpoint and either displaying the 9 quarters, 25 months, 104 weeks around that. Generally speaking as agile use cases go 6 years is a relatively long timeframe out to be attempting to project work, so it is not optimized for that. I would be curious to hear more about what it is you need to accomplish. We might have some other options to help you, or we may need to consider adapt our current features to better serve a need you could help us understand. I'm especially curious to hear about

• how the 6 year timeframe came about? is that based on some operational need like a budgeting cycle? or is that how long you estimated the project will take to begin and end? 
• what is the nature of the work involved? multiple teams? building features? more operational or project based work?
• the audience this is intended to serve. Is it just for you to accomplish tasks or is this something you need to visually represent to others?
• anything else that might help me understand why the limitations on the current timeline feature doesn't serve your purposes

If you have time to share more on what you are looking to accomplish, then at best I might be able to help advise you how to accomplish it in Rally. At worst it might help us understand a use case we haven't accounted for yet, and need to consider. Any help you can offer clarifying would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Gwen

[Raphael Nash]

What I am trying to do is some what if type modeling for how long a program may take.   For example if we only have 3 developers the program will take 8 years, if we have 6 developers the program will take 4 years in order to give management a sense of what our longer term budget should be. This way we can come up with what our staffing needs should be.  

I am also at a stage of the game with our adoption of Agile were I really don't have any good velocity numbers yet and I am working with a smallish team that has a lot of work to do.   

I think I am in a situation were a lot of managers are in.  We are trying to show to others what the impact of different investment levels will be.

[Gwen Gelsinon]

Thank you for that additional information @Raphael Nash It is very helpful to have that context. There is something that might be able to help you. I have toggled on for your individual user a feature that is currently in a limited Beta release. A brief summary of this feature is that it is intended to be a next generation version of the Timeline feature you are using. We paused development on it about a year ago to focus completing our new UI, but now that we are nearing completion of that work we are planning to ​resume development on the new Timeline in the coming months. Prior to pausing development we had toggled on this feature for hundreds of users that have continued to successfully use it for some (though not all) use cases for a time based view of longer range work.

All that context to let you know it is in solid enough shape to be used, but it is missing some features we know we want to implement before opening it up to a wider group of users (like the ability to filter). Nonetheless it might be able to help you in this scenario, and we might be able to learn a thing or two about where it falls short and where is succeeds. You will find this feature in your "Portfolio" Menu in addition to the Portfolio Timeline feature you are already using. If you do not see it after logging out and back in to Rally, please let me know. Subsequently let me know what feedback you have about it. Hope this helps!

Please let me know if you have any trouble accessing it.