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User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

  • 1.  User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Posted May 12, 2020 10:53 AM
    Hi there, 

    I have been using rally for quite a few months now within my team but one thing that is really bugging us is the fact user Stories from child projects in team board do not roll up to parent team board. 

    I have set it up so we have our team as the parent project and then there is a child projects underneath for each of my team members. The idea being we can see what people are doing at a individual level and at a team level.

    I would therefore like the user stories from what i call our individual team boards to roll up to the parent team board but no matter what i do i can't seem to get this working 

    All i want to do is understand what everyone is working on, set WIP limits at a individual level and at a team level and gain some basic reporting like throughput and cycle time at an individual level and team level 

    Please help

    Thanks
    Jack

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    Jack
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  • 2.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board
    Best Answer

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 12, 2020 11:16 AM
    Hi @Jack Tomkinson,

    The team board is designed to work only in the one project and not to traverse up or down the project hierarchy. It was intended for a 'single' team. If you want to get a summary of the activities, you can use something like the 'Custom Board' app in the app catalog and then you can do multi-team views. You can also swimlane on people if you wish.

    If you want to do this on a sprint by sprint basis, then the Iteration Status board is a good place to start. WIP limits are often managed by the team at your daily standup.

    I would discourage you from trying to measure individuals as it is usually not a useful metric. A scenario would be that there is someone in the team that is good at those hard, knotty problems that can only be worked on one at a time and take an age to do. Then there is someone else who is great at doing quick fixes or multi-tasking multiple items. How would you compare the 'wip', 'througput', 'efficiency', 'effectiveness'​?

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    Nik
    Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
    Rally Sales Engineer
    Rally Software
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  • 3.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Posted May 14, 2020 04:35 AM
    Than​k @Nik Antonelli and @Christopher Pola for clarifying.  That all makes sense. I have decided to just do it at a team level instead so won't have the child projects. The user story would effectively act as a project/onboarding. We have a fairly repeatable process ​​for all our projects so it would just be a case of understanding our throughput to understand how productive we're overtime etc. But also cycle time to tell us how long on average a project takes to complete

    Thanks for all your suggestions, they have been very helpful

    Jack


  • 4.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 18, 2020 09:01 AM
    Hello @Jack Tomkinson,

    Thank-you for circling back on the topic. I'm glad these responses have been helpful. You are focusing on the right metrics: throughput and cycle-time. If you have any good stories in the future about what your team has achieved please feel free to drop a note in here. I'd be happy to hear of any successes or things learned.

    Christopher​

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  • 5.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 13, 2020 12:00 PM
    Hello @Jack Tomkinson,

    I echo @Nik Antonelli comments and want to add some more context, and ideas to help.​​

    The Team Board is for a single team, and the best practice (from a design/architecture/functional perspective) is that the lowest node in the Project hierarchy represents a single team. So, the lowest node in the Project hierarchy is to represent a team. You can find more tips/guidelines in the Rally Online Help or in our Blogs too.

    I think you could achieve what is needed by just having your 'Parent' Project node as the lowest level in the Project hierarchy, and using Swimlanes (on Owner). You then automatically take advantage of the CFD/Cycle-Time/Throughput reports on the Team Board, without extra effort to create a custom report. Note: Smart CFD, the use of advanced analytics and ML is upcoming on the CFD report.

    Rally Team Board with Swimlanes by Owner


    Then as Nik mentioned, the metrics will be viewed through the lens of the whole team. If individual capacity/WIP is important then there are ways to generate reports on that, and we can help with further questions around that. Information that would be helpful for this type of conversation are: Are these teams 'permanent'? Are they Kanban teams, and do they manage work via Tasks or just at the User Story level?

    I hope this adds more insights into the best ways to use Rally and helps solve what you are trying to achieve.

    Cheers,
    Christopher


  • 6.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Posted May 14, 2020 10:59 AM
    The challenge w the concept of a team board is for a single team does not address the needs of an Agile Release Train that wants to use consistent states.  To accomodate that you have to go back to custom fields and custom apps.

    The beauty of the work views is that you do not need to do all that administration.  It would be nice to be able to have the option to cascade a team board as a 'train' board for this common use case.

    Best,
    Amy

    Amy K Meyers  |  Senior Product Manager
    GLOBAL RISK, FINANCE TECHNOLOGY & TRANSFORMATION
    American Express
    O: 602-766-2982 |  E: Amy.K.Meyers@aexp.com
    For Rally Assistance, create a case using this link:  https://jira.aexp.com/jira/browse/EPMO-8808


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  • 7.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Posted May 15, 2020 06:17 AM
    Hi Amy,

    Yes I agree this would be a good use case to have the team board as a train board. The current administration and customisation is not ideal.

    Thanks for your comments

    Jack ​


  • 8.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Posted May 15, 2020 08:01 AM
    Apologies for this longer thread contribution.....

    Another Use Case for cascading/roll-up views that I don't believe is possible via native Rally views is Big Room (Program Increment) Planning.  It would be nice if the Team Planning view could reflect all User Stories from child projects when scoped to a higher level project to provide a comprehensive view across all teams for each sprint.  

    We have our teams sequence their User Stories and work through a preliminary sprint planning exercise during BRPing and then present their team level program increment plan (quarter duration) to the extended program via the Team Planning view.  It would be nice if we could scope to program level in the project hierarchy and see our comprehensive program level program increment plan. 

    It would also be nice if the Iteration Status view could be configurable to show either a flat (current project level) or tiered/hierarchical (current level + child projects) view of all User Stories for the selected sprint.

    Going back to Team Planning, the primary use case for that view is interactive sprint planning versus after-the-fact viewing of sprints though the latter is important as well.  Velocity is typically set at team not program level so the use case I am referring to is not really for interactive sprint planning but more so for a comprehensive view of sprints in a given program increment across several teams.  If all teams are/were considered equal from a skills, knowledge, and experience perspective, then there might be a use case for interactive sprint planning across multiple teams in a single a Team Planning view but I suspect this is rare.

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    IT Program Manager
    Unum
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  • 9.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Posted May 15, 2020 10:51 AM
    The Portfolio > Release Tracking page gives a very nice view of work planned across a program increment and can be viewed from a team or higher. While not an interactive planning view, when you are trying to view the plan across the PI, all features are represented within each iteration in which the team is working on them. If all work is scheduled, you can see in which iteration the feature should be complete.

    It would be nice if there was an option to expand each feature to show the specific stories under it to give a more comprehensive view, but Release Tracking is a very good start.

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    Terry Ginzburg
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  • 10.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 18, 2020 03:24 PM
    @Chris_K​ I have not come across these specific Use Cases for Team Planning or Iteration Status previously.  They are interesting. My guess is that type of consolidated view in at least the Team Planning page will be hard to render for consumption (both on laptop or projector/TV). Nevertheless, learning more about these Use Cases would be great. Have you spoken to anyone in Product Management or submitted Feedback in the UI? I'd be happy to help with that if you would like. Also, building on @Terry Ginzburg's response, does Release Tracking provide the information/view, or if there is a gap there could you articulate it (no rush).

    Cheers,
    -Christopher



  • 11.  RE: User Stories from child projects in team board not rolling up to parent team board

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted May 18, 2020 03:12 PM
    Hello @Amy Meyers

    I know Product Management is doing some discovery/analysis work around this based on the recent conversations we have had with you and the American Express team.  In essence, having a Portfolio Kanban Board act more like a Team Board. So that, an Agile Release Train (ART) can have their own 'Train' Board (Kanban) for Features etc. Stay tuned.

    -Christopher