I’m not a huge believer in tools for tools sake. And, I’m really not a big believer in big tools for project management, especially when you’re going Agile. However, since we started scrumming, we have been using spreadsheets to manage our product, project, release, and sprint backlogs. As our projects grew and our team embraced Scrum, our spreadsheets became increasingly complex. We were using Excel to not only create backlogs, but also to create “executive” dashboards, developer dashboards, team utilization reports, actual time keeping for tasks, etc. The spreadsheets were turning into a relational database of sorts…and they were getting unwieldy. While the team was really enjoying what we had created in Excel, the ScrumMaster (that’s me), was working behind the scenes to “manage” the spreadsheets. It was taking a few hours every Sprint just to update the spreadsheets, create the correct linkages, generate the reports, etc. In addition, as we tried to link multiple projects across Excel workbooks for utilization reports, timekeeping, and other assorted TPS type reports, things grew even more complex.
So, we thought, “We’re a group of developers, let’s turn this into an application.” I sketched out a database schema for the back-end and started putting together estimates for building our own custom solution. At the same time, I began evaluating COTS solutions. I looked at several vendors’ products. Some were desktop applications and others were web apps. When I finished my evaluation, it looked like our costs to design, develop, and implement our own solution were easily going to be in the six-digit range. Now, we work for a consulting firm and internal R&D/dev projects don’t usually get funded at that level. So, we turned our sights back to the COTS products and did a more rigorous evaluation. We narrowed the field down to two solutions and trialed them both for a month. At the end of the trial, it was clear that Rally Software had the solution that fit our team the best.
Rally is a web based solution that is completely hosted on Rally’s servers. This meant ease of maintenance and no worries about up-time, updates, database maintenance, etc. Overall, we concluded that Rally hit about 95% of the functionality we were looking for as well. Rally offers three different flavors of its solution: Rally Community, Rally Program, and Rally Enterprise.
- Rally Community is free for up to 10 users and supports single project, single release teams. It offers basic Agile project management and integrated defect management as well.
- Rally Program supports Agile project management across multiple teams, multiple programs and projects, and multiple releases. It has options for integrated defect management and test management, as well as an available web API. It runs $39/month for the core package, and an additional $8/month for each option ($10 for the API).
- Rally Enterprise is a full blown project management solution which has everything the Program solution has, plus all of the options and premium support. It runs $65/month.
We selected the Rally Program solution. We also purchased the defect management option, and we have a trial license for the Web API. We found the Rally sales team to be very helpful in getting started up. They’re support has been good so far and they even gave us a 1 hour into to Rally for the entire team.
We just started using the application this week on one of our biggest projects. We found it very easy to import our existing user stories and backlog items from Excel into Rally using their CSV import templates. Once we had our backlogs populated, it was simple to create Projects, Releases, and Iterations within the program. Moving a backlog item into a Release or Sprint is as easy as dragging and dropping it from the backlog into the Release or Sprint backlog. Creating Tasks within a Sprint backlog item is also extremely easy. We were able to assign Tasks to team members and instantly see how each task affected individual utilization for the Sprint. In addition to creating backlog items, etc., we also imported our existing defect lists from our SharePoint site using Rally’s defect CSV templates. Again, totally easy operation.
In the short time we’ve been using Rally, the entire team has been completely impressed with the functionality and great performance. We can’t believe how fast the app works. You won’t even realize it’s a web app after a few minutes of using it. Our seasoned developer team has stated that they think Rally is one of the best web apps they’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. The Team has been jumping right in and taking advantage of everything Rally has to offer. And I have been taking it a little easier now that I don’t have to spend countless hours maintaining our old spreadsheets!
Check out Rally Software at http://www.rallydev.com/. You can get a free trial, or start using their Community solution if you have a single release project. For a comparison of all of the features each solution offers check out http://www.rallydev.com/product_editions.jsp.
© Copyright 2007, ChrisSpagnuolo.com GeoScrum! by Chris Spagnuolo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
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