Rally Software Reviews

It's designed around Agile, so it has all of the pieces that match up with the process. For us, at the portfolio management level, we can see everything at one glance, all of the projects, where they're at; and, at the iteration level, we’re able to populate the iteration, and view progress reports on it. We've recently moved all of our defect tracking onto it also - it's nice to be able to pull defects right into sprint plans.

• We're using it to manage the training content development we're doing, so it's kind of a one-off case. It's not your typical agile project, but so far it's working well, and we're able to incorporate most of the agile methodology into our processes. We get all of the transparency that comes with the tool; so we have a clear view of what's happening with all of our projects, what state they're in, and where all the pieces are. Blockers stand out, so they're getting more attention. It's become our single location for project information. Although there's been a bit of a learning curve for the team (more around the processes we're using than with complexity in the product), I've had several team members tell me that it's a good product that they enjoy working with.

I'd like to be able to color code timeboxes, so I have an easy visual way to track the success of sprints. Workflow is not a strength, we've cobbled together our own workflows around changes in State and Ownership.

About a year now. What we're doing in CA Agile Central is pretty stable now, although we still tweak our own internal processes from time to time. Still exploring and learning the wonderful world of Agile.

We weren't involved in it.

It's been extremely stable for as long as we've been using it.

I see no problems with scalability. In addition to what we're doing, I know our Services team and Product Development team are using the product, so I expect scaling is not an issue.

Haven't really used it.

Haven't really used it. Which I like.

Spreadsheets and MS Project. CA Agile Central is designed around Agile methodology, so it was a perfect fit for the processes we wanted to put in place. We couldn't do the things we're doing now with the previous products.

I wasn't involved in setting up the product itself. I jumped in after it was already in use.

Wasn't involved.

The decision to use it came from our development team. The whole development team is using it. Our Services team has been using it for years.

If you're focusing on agile, this is the right product to use. It's built around it. I've tried to do things with MS Project and that sort of thing, and you just can't manage it the same way. It's just not built for the same kind of cycle.

It is a well thought-out solution. It's a great centerpiece for Agile methodology. It works.

I am from the QA team and am using this especially for test automation. We have so many test scripts and this would take some time. Earlier, we used to have a different tracking system, but the difference is that, if there are any new changes, then it was very hard for us to get them into the system. However, with the CA Agile tool, we were able to have two-week scrums and two-week sprints. After each sprint, we were able to pull any new tricks that came up and we could easily prioritize, prior to the two-week period, instead of having to wait for a long time. We were able to easily create and track the user stories. We were able to understand the graph as to how the trend is going, so all this was really helpful.

I find that tracking of all the user stories feature is extremely beneficial, because I can know in terms of the user stories, how much work is completed and how much is still pending in the backlog.

During the last four years, there were four projects in there, that I was handling. However, one of the issues that I am facing is how to remove the old projects, as one of the projects is over. Although, CA Agile is still showing me all of those four projects and I don't want that information now. So, there should be a way to remove that project.

I am not sure whether CA has their own bug tracking tools. However, if there are some tools like that, then it will be very much helpful, i.e., to have one integrated system, where the configuration management as well as this bug tracking tool are integrated. Bug tracking we have with NetApp's internal tools, but I don't think we are able to do the integration between CA Agile Central and what we have.

So, it would be good to have one single complete solution for complete development, such as for tracking agile work, the bug tracking tool, and Perforce management, the version control system. Thus, an integrated system would be very much useful, I think.

I am not sure if CA has the integration tool part, currently or not; however, I am unaware of that. Hence for me, the integration between other tools will be a very useful add-on feature. In the market, there are other tools that are available as a complete solution, providing tracking tools, bug tracking features and necessary support as a package. If CA Agile Central could also provide that kind of integration such as the bug tracking, a version control control system as a single solution, then it will be very much helpful.

Sometimes, we have noticed that our CA admin sends out an email, maybe that could be in regards to the maintenance work that is internal to the NetApp.

There weren't any scalability issues. For my work, it is perfectly suitable as of now, so I don't see any scalability related issues, for my work as of now.

If we experience any issues, then we have the NetApp internal support and will basically reach out to them. Thus, we don't directly contact CA Agile Center support, as we have enough people internally to get NetApp support. I would give them a 8/10 rating.

Initially, I was using Microsoft Project. Since it was not compatible with the agile environment and we then started using the agile methodology in our project, we started using this solution. Also, NetApp is providing support for this tool.

The setup was simple but I also remember that the one thing that is missing in CA Agile Central is the integration of data, as when you compare it with Atlassian JIRA or similar tools.

I did not evaluate other options because my company is providing the tool. I believe that before choosing it, my company may have done some kind of comparison with other tools, and then selected this one.

More than a team or a manager decision, this was a company-wide decision.

This is a very helpful solution, especially for those who are planning to switch over to the agile environment. Although I have not evaluated any other tools, I do have experience with other tools as well, but I have never compared both of them.

This is a great solution, especially in terms of the graphs and how the trend is going on. That is the one of the main features, which is helping me a lot. During a two-week sprint, if I look into it, I can exactly know where the trend is going or whether all the work is getting completed or not. Thus, it provides a good forecast as to how much of your work is getting done or is still pending. This is a good positive aspect to suggest to others.

We use it at the enterprise level, from the leadership to managers to teams, and everyone can use the same software easily.

It's very user friendly and intuitive as the information can be viewed and customized easily.

It's the first software that allows everyone to use the same software that is actually user friendly.

An improvement would be if at the leadership level, they want to view certain teams, it’s easy to break down. For example, if a portfolio is 60 teams, as a director, I can filter and easily see only my teams and the stats I want.

Also, the defect-management cycle needs work. It's already there, but the functionality isn't all the way through.

It could offer more functionality and spread those functionalities to individual users in a way they can understand. That would make it more intuitive, but I understand that doing so is a challenge.

We've been using it for over five years.

We haven’t had any stability issues.

It’s meant for scaling and that’s the top functionality.

They were great. Never any issues.

It was already in place when I joined.

I've performed installations in other organizations, and it was very intuitive.

We also looked at products that have good scalability because of the size of our enterprise.

My advice would be to use it. As with any tool it has advantages and disadvantages.

We use it move projects through the software development lifecycle.

It performs pretty well. It's nice that everybody throughout the whole process has access and is shown the relevant information to their part of the job, their part of the SDLC.

It really does help everything just flow through the cycle better; everybody just worrying about their small piece of the pie. And then the project managers can have a bigger overview of it. I like how it moves things. It moves development through the whole lifecycle. 

The most useful part is how it breaks down tasks into parents and children, manageable tasks. It has a whole project as an initiative, and then it breaks it down further and further. And then you get to actual user stories and tasks that you can sit and develop. You don't have to worry about the whole big picture. It's nice how it breaks everything down into chunks.

I think the interface could be a little bit more visual and less wordy. Right now, it seems like it's just a lot of text on the page. In other ticketing systems where it's more visual, you can see more of a flow. But in this one it's more just a list of tasks. I would like to see that a little bit better, especially considering it has so many great organizational features, like child tasks, different artifacts. It would be great to see it presented more appropriately.

Very stable. I can't think of any down time we've ever had with it, to be honest.

I don't think we've had to worry about scalability too much yet. We just use it for one piece of software still, right now. So it's still very small, we're almost kind of piloting it right now.

I don't think we've needed to use tech support. Honestly, if we did, it wouldn't have been my job in our company. We have a relationship manager that I'm sure would take care of that.

We were using Waterfall, which worked for decades, but it's definitely showing its age. I think they just wanted to switch to the Agile methodology and Rally was probably the best software to do that with.

It just came to us and all of a sudden, management said, "Hey we're going to use Agile and Rally, and good luck." So we've been trying to learn it for the last year. 

I wasn't involved in the initial setup. but they put it out pretty fast, and I have seen changes in it being made fairly quickly. So I would say it's pretty straightforward.

The most important criterion when selecting a vendor is support. I know as a team lead for a developer team, I've personally worked with other third-party softwares that we integrate with. They've assigned people specifically to our account, which I'm sure happens at a lot of Fortune 200 companies working very big accounts. So the personalization is nice. We can have a weekly meeting with the same person, the same point of contact. If anything goes down, if we need assistance with anything, that person is available. Don't take the people out of IT. We work with computers so much it's easy to get out of touch, so keeping a personal touch is probably the best thing.

I would rate it a "high eight" out of 10. It's a very capable software. Like I said, I just would like to see it presented a little bit more visually. It's definitely got some power but everything's got room for improvement. 

Try to put yourself in the mind a developer and try and use it and see how you think it would flow. Really, it's a whole team collaboration. I'm not in the project support aspect, but I can empathize with them and think how they'd want to see things. Just try using it. See how you can move a project through it.

It helps us find our users stories and allows us to see what everyone on our team is working on, and if we have any blocks.

It's performed pretty well.

It allows our team, and all the external teams that are waiting on us for dependencies, to see where progress is on the stuff that we're about to develop and deploy.

It integrates well with the things that we have. We're able to tie our stories in with our code repository, so that way our check-ins are tied back to our user stories.

I can't really think of any additional features that it needs. It pretty much has everything that we use it for.

It's been really stable. There have been some downtimes with it, but they're fairly short.

I'm not sure how well it scales. It's worked so far with our team.

I know a lot of our teams are using JIRA. The switch is because it has more features.

When looking to select a new vendor, our criteria are

• price 
• feature set.

I give it a nine out of 10, just because of the slight downtimes, which make it hard to go in and update things.

Definitely look into it, because of all of the different tools for user stories and test case management. It's been one of the best I've experienced.

The most valuable features for me as a developer are Iteration Planning and Iteration Tracking.

• Iteration Planning is very helpful for the team during planning sessions. It shows the exact picture of where we are and what is coming.
• Iteration Tracking is a very useful dashboard that shows the status of the stories and details what they are about.

This is the only tool our team is using for tracking and monitoring agile projects (features, stories, tasks and use cases). It’s stable, easy to navigate and fast. It’s not overwhelming with details and fields, but provides necessary placeholders to keep all the information needed for the project and have a picture where we are and what is coming.

I would say use cases is an area with room for improvement. I found it a bit cumbersome and not so easy to grasp a global picture. Some teams prefer to track use cases through the HPE QC tool, keeping the rest in CA Agile Central.

We are using CA Agile Central since the beginning of 2016.

We had a lot of stability issues; however, all of them were solved during Summer/Fall 2016. Recently, it’s been stable and provides the necessary functionality.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I haven’t dealt with technical support.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

The setup was done for us already.

I wasn’t the one to decide which solution to adopt. However, I like CA Agile Central as the choice of our management.

Go for it. It’s a nice tool to use.

For me, it is the burn up and burn down chart, so I can measure progress easily. It shows me the progress of the team and it helps me show the progress to my business.

The charts that this tool has make it transparent. Also, the information is there for everybody to share and it supports Agile methodology. This tool makes it easier. These are the features that are valuable to us. Our team’s Agile maturity level is close to expertise.

I would like to see it more well connected with the PPM tool. We have Planview. It does connect to it but I would like it to connect more robustly. They just introduced a new milestone feature of the product. I would like it to be more user-friendly.

Stability of the product is good.

We have over a thousand employees using it and it is extremely scalable.

I personally haven't used technical support. We have a PPT tool support group which has used it. So, if we have any issues, we report to our PPT support group and they reach out to CA technical support.

When we moved to Agile, we were just using standard scrambled writings on the wall. We knew with the scale of our organization, we needed something to suit our needs and so we decided to invest in this product. It did meet our needs, especially in terms of scalability as we knew that there were going to be so many licenses we would need. We needed a more robust organization.

In addition, we needed someone who was flexible to work with us. At that time, it was Rally and they were very flexible to work with us. The most important criteria for choosing this vendor was their willingness to work with us, features, scalability and cost; also it needed to fit our organization culture.

I did not choose this tool personally, it was an enterprise decision.

I believe they looked at JIRA as well and they picked CA Agile Central.

Go for it but make sure you learn the tool and understand it. Hopefully, you have a product expert.

I would like the milestone features to be more seamless and user-friendly.

I think what’s great is the ability for teams to really plan at the team level. CA Agile Central does this very well without much overhead. This allows our teams to really focus on the work, as opposed to the administration of the tool. I think at the team level, that's the most valuable.

At the portfolio level, what’s most valuable is being able to manage the visions, the features, and the releases; it’s very easy, simple, and straightforward to do. I think there's good value, as well, by bringing together the business vision statements and what IT is thinking in terms of delivery, and what's possible in terms of capacity. The objects within the system are integrated well enough to allow for really smooth end-to-end planning.

It has improved the organization's functions by eliminating time wasted waiting for someone to have a prioritized list on their laptop or on some SharePoint site that to which we then have to get access. All of this is simplified and we're not wasting time looking for information. Everything is right in one place, correlated, and related in the right way, and at the right level that allows for planning, execution, and tracking afterwards.

We have pockets of really good Agile maturity in the company and some pockets where more maturity is still necessary. I think the bank as a whole is still maturing in terms of agility, and it's ability to adapt to change. I would describe it as just pockets at this point, but growing very, very quickly.

We use Agile for coaching as well. We try to coach to a few things. One of them is, of course, business value; to say, "hey, focus on delivering high business value first". So again, we are able to take advantage of the prioritized lists at all levels within the tool.

This applies to transparency also; making data visible at all levels and to anybody who is a stakeholder or part of the team. The information is right there, and everybody has the same exact view given the access that they are granted.

We work on predictability also. You're able to see the level of velocity that each team and each release has very quickly. You don't have to go and search for data. When talking about improvement, it's more of a process that we coach. But, enabling those types of conversations around continuous improvement based on accessible, real data from the system is invaluable.

We're focused on multiple areas. We are trying to get teams to think about the system as a whole and not just their small areas. We're trying to get end-to-end visibility of how efficient we are at doing our work. That's where we coach.

We have submitted lots of ideas to the Ideas portal, such as milestones. We would like to make sure that that's a first class citizen, if you will. Make it a little bit more robust regarding our API plans. Reporting I think is a big one too, especially at the bank.

We base a lot of decisions on real data. So if we're not able to get that real data in a very simple way and be able to slice and dice it, then we aren't as effective as we could be at making those decisions quickly. I'd like to see a reporting interface that is easy to use, based on report templates that we can take advantage of.

Lastly, the Insights module within the tool was great when it came out, yet very few people harness it's power today. I think it could be more integrated into their reporting interface, if it's possible. It would really drive true insight right into the data that we are creating around our work.

I think the CA Agile Central is pretty stable. I've used it for over 6 years and it's fairly stable. We use it on the SaaS model. The website says 90% up time, which is fantastic. No real major down times that we've seen.

We use Agile Central at scale already. The tool is being used across the entire bank and across the world. At last count, we had 7,000 or 8,000 people using it across multiple teams in multiple organizations and these are active licenses. I believe we are already using it at scale in a very real way to deliver value.

We have worked with technical support when we have questions of defects. They are very responsive. They approach their work with an open mind or open transparent setup, where they're sharing the latest information and where things stand in terms of questions, or defects, or enhancements, if you will. Overall, we have no complaints at all, from my perspective at least.

I don't believe there was a previous solution in place for Agile teams. Some teams were using Atlassian JIRA and then some are still using version one, but that was in parallel and not a replacement.

I was not part of the initial set up, but I have been a subscription administrator and I'm aware of what goes into it. It's not overly difficult. I think working with the CA setup team, makes it very easy.

When selecting a vendor, the ability to integrate with other internal tools is first. I also look at the stability of the brand and extensibility in being able to extend out. Of course, meeting our minimum needs is a given, such as being able to track and report on data. I want to know how robust those items are. I think most products provide those types of functions, it's just how robust they are and how high a grade they have in terms of being able to deliver that functionality. That is what differentiates vendors.

My advice to others is to start right away. Learn as much as you can. The tool itself is not going to be your impediment or your longest pole in the tent. It’s going to take a long time to figure out what your internal culture and processes are, and the tool is only there to help you reflect what you are producing. So start early.