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November Rally Office Hours Recap

  • 1.  November Rally Office Hours Recap

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Nov 30, 2020 11:49 AM

    As a follow-up to our November 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, December 17, at 12PM ET for our October Session (add to calendar or view upcoming sessions). We look forward to connecting with you!


    November Session Recap


    Discussion topic: Rally Product Management Announcements and Updates
    Discussion lead by Greg Gould, Rally Head of Product Management

    For this month's product update, Greg Gould, Rally Head of Product Management briefly shared the Rally Roadmap. Highlights include the recently released Data Density (Grids and Boards) and Pinned and Recent Items. Future items included improved search, improved reports, new timeline, improved dependency management, smart CFD and objectives and key results. 


    Questions and Answers:

    Responses from Chris Pola, Noel Rodriguez, Michele Kubicek, Nancy Failla and Pam Wilder

    • MBOs have been disastrous for Agile teams. How will OKRs be better?
      • While this is more of a philosophical conversation we're happy to share our opinion. We believe that OKRs have advantages over MBOs including:
        • OKRs have alignment and focus to inform cascading backlogs
        • OKRs are iterative and collaborative
        • OKRs promote team ownership and accountability
        • OKRs reinforce organizational disciplines to retrospect and continuously improve.
      • This is a topic the Rally team is passionate about. Please see recent blogs and webinars by Ian McGinnis for more. 
    • I'm always spending time explaining that releases are really planning increments, and projects are really teams. Can we allow customers to name these to better align with their process?
      • This is feedback that we hear a lot. Something that wasn't mentioned in Greg's brief roadmap presentation was a focus on better alignment to SAFe® with regard to terminology in Rally. Specific items we are considering are moving from the term 'project' to 'teams' or even 'ART' and also moving from the term 'release' to 'program increment'. These options will be UI label changes only and will likely not affect the API. 
    • My dev teams are asking for the dates to be listed on the team status page much like it is on iteration status in the dropdown on the top of the screen. Is there a way I can do this or is it an admin setting?
      • While this is not on our roadmap, we will keep this as an enhancement request as we continue to enhance the Rally UI.
    • My teams often ask if we can add "flow state" to the story and defect cards. We can see it on the team board of course and on a list view, but if we open the story or defect itself it is not available. Is this on the roadmap?
      • While this is not on our roadmap, this has been noted as an inconsistency in how Rally operates and has been passed on to the appropriate product manager for consideration. 
    • Is there any plan to upgrade notifications?
      • We currently do not have any work related to notifications on our FY21 Roadmap. However, there will be a new notifications app available in the app catalog soon. 
    • Does anyone have Rally integrated with Clarity?
      • Rally does integrate with Clarity, and we have many successful implementations. The team will follow up with the individual who posed this question for a more personalized conversation. 
    • Do you have a timeframe of when the Smart CFD will be rolled out to everyone?
      • It is our intention to have the Smart CFD to GA in Q1 or Q2 of FY21. We are, however, bringing customers into the beta program and will reach out to the individual who posed this question to get them enrolled.
    • Can we have the ability to add custom fields with an attachment? I have a checklist in Excel that I need my teams to fill out after each iteration and would like to attach it with the iteration selected.
      • We do not have any work planned in the near term around enhancing the attachment functionality. We will log this as an enhancement request for further consideration. 
    • Is there any plan to add edit or update options through Excel imports? Currently only new items can be created. Also, it looks like I cannot create timeboxes from the Excel Plugin. 
      • We currently do not have any planned work related to the MS Excel add-in. We will log this as an enhancement request. 

    Suggest a Topic!

    We want to hear from you! Are there any topics you would like to discuss during our opening discussion? If so, comment on this post, and we will take it into consideration for our future sessions.

    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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    Product Marketing Manager
    Rally Software
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