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  • 1.  Task for other team

    Posted Mar 30, 2020 06:45 AM
    Good morning,


    I am looking for a best practice, tips in Rally for following subject.

    I am in an big organization with teams owning product but also with a central team with very specific SME (Subject matter expert).
    Each team having his own backlog (Rally project).

    What a would like to do is creating a User story in the backlog of the team owning the product but would like to be able to identify the support/work required from the SME team.

    So my ideal idea would be under the user story to create a task on the SME project (different from the User story project) but it seems that it is not possible within Rally and I would like to avoid to have to create a fake user story.

    Any idea, any suggestion, any tips ?

    Kind regards,
    Marc

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    Marc Beaufort
    Agile Scaling Transformation Expert
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  • 2.  RE: Task for other team

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Mar 30, 2020 06:50 AM
    Hi Marc,

    Here is an extract from my training slides. It may not fit with your current way of working, but is really where the best practice fits in:


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    Nik
    Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
    Rally Sales Engineer
    Rally Software
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  • 3.  RE: Task for other team

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Mar 30, 2020 06:53 AM
    If you organise in this way, there are a number of apps that can help visualise the work.

    The only other alternative is to have both teams doing stories and put a dependency between them. You can then check on the dependencies during your standups

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    Nik
    Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
    Rally Sales Engineer
    Rally Software
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  • 4.  RE: Task for other team

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Apr 01, 2020 02:44 AM
    Chris highlights a problem with posting extracts of a training deck without giving the context. Basically, you will need to move the work items up a level, Instead of using stories and task, use Features and Stories. Stories can then be fed out to the teams to be managed in their backlog. A team can still own a feature, but then have a connection to a story in another teams backlog.

    I wasn't suggesting adding another layer in your work items levels even though the slide might have led to that conclusion. Oops!

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    Nik
    Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
    Rally Sales Engineer
    Rally Software
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  • 5.  RE: Task for other team
    Best Answer

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Mar 31, 2020 09:36 PM
    Hello Marc,

    I will provide an update on this in two parts: 1st best practice and 2nd context specific answers.

    1st Part: Rally Best Practices
    The Project hierarchy represents the organizational structure/OBS. The lowest node of that hierarchy being a team. In a product model or scaled agile model the other levels of the Project/Organizational hierarchy will represent the Agile Release Train/Program and Shared/Systems teams / Value Stream / Solution / Product Portfolio etc. With Project hierarchy think 'organizational hierarchy', and think 'Who, is doing the work?'. It repreents a team (teams at all levels) and their backlog.

    The Portfolio Item hierarchy represents the work, configure it to represents the 'What, are we doing?'. 

    As a best practice we recommend never mix the two hierarchies. Keep the people/teams in the Project hierarchy, keep the work in the Portfolio Item/Artifact hierarchy.  Following these guidelines will pay dividends, and everything will be very visible for effortless for planning ceremonies, execution status reports at a glance, and governance. 

    Moving on to User Stories and Tasks: Each team has their own backlog, and a User Story will belong in the team's backlog. Some teams use Tasks and other teams do not use Tasks. If the team are using Story/Tasks then the guidance is that the Task is assigned to an individual in the team. This follows the best practice guidelines for applicable agile methodologies. Also, a Task should be something that can be completed by an individual in less than a day. I realize you are probably aware of all this but stating this to help frame context to the question.

    2nd Part: Answers in Context to the posted Question
    In the example describe it seems that multiple agile Product teams collaborate with the SME team, and that SME team maybe a shared or system team. Therefore, if the product team has work that is dependent on the SME team, ideally that work is also on the SME team backlog represented as a Story and dependencies mapped. This allows for all sorts of decision support and visualization: ensuring the SME team prioritize the right work, are not over capacity and being a bottleneck, and ensure they sequence their work to support the Sprint/PI objectives of the multiple product team. 

    If possible, I'd like to learn about: How long on average is the duration for the Task/s that need to be complete by the SME team? Do the product teams experience any delays to get their User Stories completed/accepted having these Tasks in their backlog too? How do these teams plan together, and do they share a PO? Is dependency management an important factor in this for the PO, SM or team? 

    Also, other potential options to consider for this, yet the caveat is we need to discover more information, are potentially the use of the Risk object, or learning more about the team taxonomy (to remove the dependency) or to use a matrix for the teams, and represent a shared backlog with the project/organizational hierarchy.

    I hope this is helpful. Setting up the Portfolio Item and Project/Organizational hierarchy properly will ensure the native pages in Rally provide a rich visual display of how work flows through these teams. 

    Cordially,
    Christopher Pola
    Executive Advisor - Rally Software