Rally Software

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  • 1.  August Office Hours Recap

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Sep 17, 2020 04:41 PM

    August Rally Office Hours Recap

    As a follow-up from our August Rally Office Hours session, we'd like to share some highlights in addition to the questions that were asked, along with their respective answers. 

    Thank you to all who joined us live. We appreciate your feedback and participation in the last session and are looking forward to our next one. If you were not able to attend, there is always an opportunity to ask questions here on the Rally Community discussion board and we'll do our best to answer. 

    Join us on Thursday, September 24, at 11AM ET for our September Session (add to calendar or view upcoming sessions). We look forward to connecting with you!


    August Session Recap

    Discussion topic: PI Planning Preparation
    Response from Chris Pola

    How does the Rally team prepare for PI Planning, and how do you facilitate the hard conversations about what makes it into the plan and what does not?

    We review current objectives for the product and overall business and then create objectives for the release. Quarterly business reviews and other business context is used to prepare Initiative  and feature backlogs that feed into feature refinement for PI Planning. We use data in Rally to prioritize (using the WSJF method) the portfolio and feature backlog. We pay close attention to WIP limits for the higher level initiatives so it's easier to understand what can realistically get done. 

    We conduct a retro at the end of a PI to understand the status. This helps in preparing for the next PI because you must gauge capacity that can be allocated to taking on new work. You can only do this by understanding the real status of the delivered work in the current PI and what will carry over into the next PI. We use a combination of the Release Tracking and Plan Progression pages to facilitate these conversations. 

    At the start of PI Planning we have 2 conversations based on our current understanding of the previous PI and the available capacity of our teams:

    • First we discuss what is not going to get done in the previous PI
    • We then have the hard conversations about what will not be included in the upcoming PI

    We then continue our PI planning exercise to continue to refine the features, moving from preliminary estimates to refined estimates to gain a better understanding of what a realistic plan looks like. We are also careful to balance the work in terms of discovery vs. development/delivery, meaning we are sure to leave room for spikes and discovery work needed for what will be planned in the next PI. 

    If you'd like to learn more about how Rally does PI planning please contact us. 


    Questions and Answers:
    Responses from Chris Pola, Noel Rodriguez, Michele Kubicek and Pam Wilder

    • I would love some tips & techniques to ordering a backlog with over 1000 items. Specifically, when I know the story/defect I want to move to the top of the backlog, but I can't find where it is in order to move it into the prioritization list.
      • Responses from the Audience:
        • Rally has recently added new filters to some of the older screens and functionality. These filters can be used to decrease the length of the backlog and make it easier to maintain without having to remove valid backlog items.
        • Other audiences recommended using prioritization methods such as MOSCOW or WSJF. 
      • We also received some advice on large backlogs from our audience with comments like:
        • Big backlogs are evil
        • Most big backlogs never get done.
        • Just remove things now to get an honest view of what might actually get done.
        • Remove items after they have a birthday
        • Rank backlog items and remove ones with lower rank
    • I would love to learn more about the view that can capture a backlog that includes functional features, enablers and defects(maintenance)based on the Capacity Planning allocation model recommended by SAFe  
      • When using the capacity planning view in Rally be sure to include these to ensure capacity is allocated in the PI. You can assign each of the different types of work items different colors to see allocation amounts. 
      • You can create investment categories for each and tag the work items with the investment categories and report on allocations using the tags. 
      • You can also use Milestones to capture and report on all of these types of work. 
    • Is there a way to remove team members, such as a scrum master and product owner - who aren't actually doing the work, from the FTE that gets calculated in the Insights metrics?
      • No, There is not a way to do this. 
    • Can you confirm how the 'ready' flag changes.  We have a custom board w iterations as the columns, when a story moved to another iteration, it changed the ready flag.  Is this expected?  What is the logic for the 'ready' flag to change
      • The flag changes when the state of the work item changes. If you change columns on a board, the state will change triggering the change to the ready flag. 
    • Will you ever add the ability to cancel stories/defects?
      • While this is not in any of our current plans we will take it as an enhancement request. 
    • Objectives in Rally vs. Excel Add-in would be helpful. Such as to be able to create objectives, associate to a PI, not a work item.... & I would love to be able to put in PI objectives and the ability to align features to it and then visual the links such as on the release tracking screen
      • Currently customers define PI Objectives in the Release Timebox field called 'Theme'. Here they use a table or some format to define the Objectives in the desired format e.g. OKRs. The Features scheduled (associated) in the Release are then easily tracked etc. This is one example of the current functionality. There is more... Rally is currently building a bonafide Objective object/functionality in the platform. The Beta release for that is coming soon, we anticipate the Beta release by the end of the summer or early autumn. Stay tuned for updates in the Community, and register your interest there when there is a posting about the Objectives (module).
    • Are you using the "Capacity Planning" view to prepare for PI Planning?  And if so, how is it helping you?
      • Rally does use Capacity Planning during PI/Release Planning, and the teams use Capacity Planning as part of the PI read out/plan update.
      • Teams are empowered to create a Capacity Plan that meets the PI Objectives. We use one Capacity Plan for the entire ART/Release Train to maintain visibility and transparency across the train.
    • I would love to see dependencies across Rally Hierarchy. Currently I can only see dependencies in the same Rally Hierarchy.
      • We are assuming that by Rally Hierarchy that means dependencies between the Work Item hierarchy. For example: visualize a dependency between a Feature and a User Story? Is that correct? This is not that common of a request. Generally in planning, the dependencies are identified and defined btwn the same level for the work items with dependencies. We are also doing a lot of spiking around visualization. We are learning that the visualizations that can be generated are fun but not that valuable. We are trying to innovate on how best to manage dependencies: reduce the number of dependencies (potential for delay), and manage them when visualizing them.
    • I am looking to learn to import xls sheet into US's via a direct upload or using the Rally XLS add-in. (I can't  ever to get that to work)
      • We are happy to help here. We offer the CSV import/export and also the MS Excel Add-In. While there is documentation available, I do want to suggest checking out the videos on the Rally YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLynEdQRJawmzUQCBNZROx4cDIAc6ytjFO.Videos 14 and 15 might be useful if you like to have a video tutorial. Alternatively you can contact us in the Community and we can help do a training session.
      • Note: the Required fields and the right format is required for fields as the updates go through the API. Sometimes looking at the API documentation can help too. 
    • I'm stuck in creating a custom app. I have a user-story record, but need the ObjectIDs of its children and have not found any documentation on how to obtain them. I get the "ref" property of the "Children" property, but how do I …
      • I think you are halfway there. The way I would approach this is: take the Children _ref property (URL), send a GET to that Children _ref property and append ?fetch=ObjectID,FormattedID etc. That should return a list/array of the Children ObjectID's. The Total Result Count should equal the number of Children/Direct Children Count etc.
    • I would like the ability to configure notification scheduling - e.g. daily, once a week, etc. Notification Emails trigger too frequently which causes folks to ignore them. Also adding portfolio items to notification types.
      • Additional input and answers from the audience
        • I Agree.  Most folks in our organization don't use the notifications because it's difficult to add enough/the right criteria to not blow up your inbox.
        • For notifications, I create Outlook Folder and rule so that the emails don't clog my regular inbox
      • Rally Response: While we do not have any work planned in the area of notifications at this time, we will take this as an enhancement request. 

    On Feedback and Feature Requests

    We know that there is always a desire to submit Feedback and Feature Requests during these sessions. The best way for our product team to receive feedback and feature requests is through the Feedback button in Rally (via the upper right hand corner of any Rally page). 



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