Rally Software Reviews

• Real-time status tracking
• Capacity planning
• Ease of configuration of reports and dashboards
• Iteration and release planning
• Ability to personalize views
• Ability to see vital information in one screen as opposed to having to navigate to multiple pages

Capacity and resource planning help us understand how much work an individual can accommodate per sprint and if any one person is over-allocated.

Release planning is made simpler by the Agile Central interface.

Honestly, I can’t think of any areas that need improvement.

I have been using Agile Central for four and a half years.

Once or twice in a couple years we experienced outages, but not frequently.

I have used Agile Central in small organizations, as well as large organizations working in a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment.

I have never had to use technical support.

I have not previously used another solution, but I have to use JIRA now and I would rate JIRA a 3/10 compared to Agile Central at a 10/10.

I was not an admin of the tool, so I’m not sure how complex the application setup was.

I don’t know about the pricing.

I was not in charge of making the decision to purchase the product.

We needed something that we could collaborate with and was easy to use, and easy to access for business analysts.

We are trying to be agile, but we still use waterfall for a lot of things. We are not working agile as much as we should. We don’t adapt as quickly as we should. The tools are all there; but we are not implementing it correctly and not enforcing the rules enough.

The most valuable features of CA Agile Central for us are:

• It provides organization.
• It's a good collaboration spacing unit.
• It does a really good job of tracking overall statuses.
• There's a ton of flexibility. I can use it for anything I can think of within the development lifecycle. So that's really nice.
• It is user friendly.
• It really helps us with tracking progress, so we can see where we’re heading.

It's tough to think of areas for improvement. I mean, I think it's all there. Making some of the features more obvious would probably make them more useful. Right now, there's a lot of power and flexibility; but it's not always obvious. There should be something in the way of best practices and suggestions, and to know what makes logical sense. You really need to have a good plan for it. I've seen how it can be mishandled and not implemented strongly to where it becomes more of a hindrance than a value.

For the most part, the stability is quite good. We haven't had a lot of issues. There are little tweaks and quirks, here and there. I think a lot of that is because the tool is so flexible and powerful; and it can do a lot of different things if you want it to. You can kind of corner yourself, where you’re doing something not really modular. It is not really a stability problem, but in some ways, you could have too much content to the point that it drowns out the rationale for using the system.

The scalability is incredible. It's not always straightforward and easy. It’s varied, but there is a lot of overhead in getting there. There is a lot of thought process that you need to put into it. People were already pressed for the work they already have. Asking them to set up entire systems to integrate and be flexible is quite a change.

I can’t think of any big enough issues, so we haven’t used a lot of technical support. I did contact them with a small issue that went away and then came back. I didn't really have a lot of direction on that. It was a flow issue.

Have a strong plan and clear requirements in advance for what you want to get out of the tool. You need to have strong leadership on the design: how you're going to use it, how you're going to set it up, what you expect out of it, what you might be integrated with, what you're angle is with the tool. If you just keep buying tools, you're not going to use them in the end; and it's just going to be a waste of money and a headache for people down the line using it.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor depends on which group gets to select the vendor, unfortunately. Price is always something, especially if finance is making the decision. When it comes to IT, I like flexibility and use of the system. There has to be more gain than effort. If it's too hard to implement for too little gain, then it's not worth your time. You're really looking for balance across the board. The cost has be there. There has to be value to it; so return on investment, the ROI, ends up being the big deciding factor in the end for any software company.

I use Agile Center mostly to do two things: 

1. To manage my requirements and I have hundreds of thousands of requirements. 
2. My teams uses it for their daily agile management. They describe their user stories and track the progress of their projects.

We are a former customer before it was acquired by CA. In that time, we were using just a fraction of what was there. This year, we started having more implementation and moving into the newest version. This has allowed us to use some of the high-end features like the label hierarchy, and it is good so far.

The effect of these kind of tools drives the way you organize things. You have to adopt yourself to the kind of workflow that it comes with. It helps you shape the way you flow.

Right now, it is the idea of having everything in place for both information and my project in a single network. Everybody who has different kind of users take advantage of the go through from the development guys to the project managers to management staff. Everybody has such great perspective of what is going on. It is very helpful.

There was some evolution, and as we have this old on-premise, it does takes longer. However, this complex requirement management, having different perspectives and different ways to organize the hierarchy of things, that is something that we value. It looks like the tool is at the beginning of having this new kind of approach, and we expecting different things from it.

It could improve by being self-organizing: user stories, different hierarchies, and different perspectives. Not just as a single hierarchical structure, but something that can be multidimensional.

The stability is pretty good. I do not have any complaints about the abilities of on-premise version.

I do not have a bunch of users. I have not tried scaling it.

I use more the sales consultants than the technical support. The consultants are very knowledgeable. They should be more frequently available. I would like to have more of their presence, but their technical expertise and their willingness to help me is pretty good.

We were not using a previous solution.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

No, I am not thinking about changing. I need to have a lot of pain to start making changes.

There is an ongoing change that is happening. CA has implemented with Rally, so they are still in the early emerging process. I think the evolution and integration of the two with product solutions will come after it.

A solution is not more than a solution. It is a tool. It does not solve your problem. It is fixed by the tool. It is important to think about the problem that you are trying to solve to work with the consultants to come up with the right solution. The tool by itself could not solve your product issues.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: partnership. That is the most important thing. To be there when I need someone to be connected with the evolution of my processes when I have difficulty, both technical or on the business side. That kind of partnership is what I value the most.

I like the Story Board since it helps me keep track of my stories and any tasks assigned.

It keeps everyone involved accountable to make sure the project moves along in a good pace. Since it is also viewable to all involved, it allows everyone to see where the project is at any moment.

I think the areas for improvement are mostly related to the user. There are things we often forget to update or change.

I have been using Agile Central going on 3.5 years.

We have not had problems with stability.

We have not had problems with scalability.

I haven’t requested any technical support.

I haven’t used anything but Agile Central.

It’s been so long, that I honestly don’t recall the initial setup. It must not have been difficult, since it’s not something that sticks out in my mind.

I was not involved in any of the pricing or licensing. I’m just a user.

I liked the overall user interface of Agile Central. It’s so much more user friendly. The Kanban view really helps daily tracking of user stories. The reporting tools available are easy to configure and use.

Previously, to upload test cases we usually used the Agile Central add-in for MS Excel. But as per recent changes, they have made Single Sign On to access Agile Central due to which, the add-ins seems not to be working.

I have used Agile Central for two years.

I remember that there were two incidents Agile Central was down or I was unable to login.

We have not faced any issues.

I haven't had a chance to use technical support.

I have not used a previous solution.

I’m not aware about price and licensing because of my role.

CA should keep doing what they're doing to make it better.

Execution of software development.

• Plans and prioritizes to quickly deliver value. 
• CA Agile Central provides visibility into how teams are meeting business objectives.
  

CA Agile Central helps the entire organization run like one powerful team. With the Project and Portfolio Hierarchy, we can have deep visibility into the work our teams are doing and how it ties to our business strategy and customer value. 

CA Agile Central does not have a workflow tool included. If possible, it may be necessary for some companies that this type of feature be included.

Now, it delivers quarterly releases and has reduced the backlog, thereby increasing feature velocity while keeping the quality high.

The UI/UX of the tool is good with friendly navigation.

We can track of our tasks and project estimations.

It’s a good tool to use. Charts and dashboards should be more interactive.

I have used Agile Central for over two years.

Stability is good.

Scalability is good.

I rate technical support 8/10.

I used to use JIRA.

Setup was easy.

They should go for it.

I evaluated JIRA.

They should definitely use it.

I really value the customizable dashboards, taskboards and easy filters.

New features with Team Capacity Plan have helped our organization.

• Performance is very bad especially late evening and on Fridays.
• Enterprise backups could be improved.

I have used it for three years.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

There were some scalability issues after integration with internal tools like TFS.

Technical support has lots of room for improvement. We do not get the support that we need for problem resolutions.

Initial setup was straightforward.

This is expensive compared to other tools like JIRA.

We evaluated JIRA and VersionOne.

Compare other products before making a decision on features and pricing along with customer support reviews.