Rally Software

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  • 1.  Documenting Approvals

    Posted Jun 07, 2019 09:36 AM
    In our world, we are expected to have several teams/individuals "sign off" on a defect or user story if it meets some particular criteria. For example, it may need to be reviewed by the data council, CAB, and/or CIO.

    While this can be easily done with custom fields (Approval & Approval Date), I'm wary of having so many additional fields on a screen that I can't control. 

    Is anyone else dealing with these sort of workflows, that may have some brilliant workaround?

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    - Keith Jones
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  • 2.  RE: Documenting Approvals

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jun 07, 2019 10:39 AM
    Hey Keith,

    For the one use-case you had mentioned, you may consider the Multi-Value drop-down where each team that signs off can add their name to the selected list, this will allow you to keep this approval process handled by a single field: https://docs.ca.com/en-us/ca-agile-central/saas/create-custom-fields#multi

    However, in general, there isn't a practice to minimize custom fields, they should be created based on your needs. Normally you shall create custom fields on the Workspace level, then each team can decide if they show/hide it. Irrelevant fields for a team can be hidden and lower the count. 

    It sounds like there may be too much information, generally speaking (regardless of Rally)  that perhaps can be reduced. Just for curiosity: How do you handle this today without Rally or outside Rally so that you don't overwhelm your teams?

    Let us know if that helped. If not, perhaps you can provide more use-cases showing the need for too many custom fields.

    Sagi


  • 3.  RE: Documenting Approvals

    Posted Jun 07, 2019 03:15 PM
    Sagi,

    Thank you for the response. Yes, there is quite a bit more information gathering than I would have liked. I think a lot of it has to do with new teams/organizations, and new processes all being implemented from multiple directions. They are tracking it in spreadsheets, which tend to multiple and grow like mushrooms.

    I like the idea of the multi-value. To be honest, I had forgotten about it since we don't use it now. That may help reduce some of the overhead. Thanks!


  • 4.  RE: Documenting Approvals
    Best Answer

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jun 07, 2019 12:49 PM
    What about using Flow States on the Team Board?


    You can assign each Flow State to a backend schedule state so a work item follows a logical progression through its lifecycle



  • 5.  RE: Documenting Approvals

    Posted Jun 07, 2019 03:15 PM
    David,

    I haven't dealt much with boards within Rally - can you report on the flow states? For example, give me a list of all items (across projects or within a single project) that exist in a particular flow state? Or is it only handled through the visual board screens?