Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Rally Software

Rally Software
Formerly CA Agile Central

Overview

What is Rally Software?

Rally Software headquartered in Boulder, Colorado developed the Rally agile software development / ALM platform which was acquired by CA Technologies and rebranded as CA Agile Central. After CA's acquisition by Broadcom the software was once again rebranded as Rally.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Powerful Agile DevOps Planning and Tracking: Many reviewers have found Rally to be a powerful tool for agile DevOps planning and tracking. …
Continue reading

Review of Rally

7 out of 10
February 01, 2018
Incentivized
It is used by multiple departments across the organization. It helps us to streamline and in the functioning of multiple projects running …
Continue reading

Love Rally!

10 out of 10
October 25, 2017
Incentivized
Our Product and Engineering teams rely solely on CA Agile Central for all aspects of our Application Lifecycle Management. We coordinate …
Continue reading
Read all reviews
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is Rally Software?

Rally Software headquartered in Boulder, Colorado developed the Rally agile software development / ALM platform which was acquired by CA Technologies and rebranded as CA Agile Central. After CA's acquisition by Broadcom the software was once again rebranded as Rally.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

46 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Jira Software?

JIRA Software is an application lifecycle management solution for software development teams. It allows users to create, prioritize and track the progress of tasks across multiple team members, and offers a wide range of integrations. It is offered via the cloud and local servers.

What is Wrike?

Wrike is a project management and collaboration software. This solution connects tasks, discussions, and emails to the user’s project plan. Wrike is optimized for agile workflows and aims to help resolve data silos, poor visibility into work status, and missed deadlines and project failures.

Return to navigation

Product Demos

Daptiv Project Portfolio Management Software and Rally Integration Demo

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

Rally Software Competitors

Rally Software Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Rally Software headquartered in Boulder, Colorado developed the Rally agile software development / ALM platform which was acquired by CA Technologies and rebranded as CA Agile Central. After CA's acquisition by Broadcom the software was once again rebranded as Rally.

Digital.ai TeamForge, IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management, and PTC Windchill RV&S are common alternatives for Rally Software.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 7.6.

The most common users of Rally Software are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(121)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Powerful Agile DevOps Planning and Tracking: Many reviewers have found Rally to be a powerful tool for agile DevOps planning and tracking. It provides rapid visibility of progress or problems across a large number of teams, allowing users to effectively manage and prioritize tasks.

Portfolio View for Clear Visibility: Reviewers appreciate the portfolio view feature of Rally, as it allows product management to have clear visibility across all their product features. This feature helps in effectively managing and prioritizing tasks by providing a comprehensive overview of the project's progress.

Strong Feedback Metrics for Task Tracking: Users have mentioned that Rally provides strong feedback metrics for both teams and individuals. This feature helps in tracking the status of tasks and ensuring that commitments are being met, contributing to efficient task management.

Difficult to Use Without Training: Many users have expressed frustration with the software's steep learning curve, stating that it is difficult to use without any training or guidance. They find it almost impossible to know how to complete their daily tasks effectively.

Insufficient Online Documentation: Some users have reported a lack of free online documentation available to help them navigate the software. This absence makes it challenging for them to find the information they need and leaves them feeling unsupported.

Overly Complicated User Interface: Several reviewers have mentioned that certain views of the user interface are overly complicated, causing confusion and hindering their ability to perform tasks efficiently. Users suggest simplifying these interfaces would greatly enhance their overall experience with the software.

Users highly recommend CA Agile Central for enterprise product management, highlighting its usefulness in running Agile projects and implementing Agile methodology. It is considered a one-stop tool for project management, reporting, and email notifications. Users suggest sticking with CA Agile Central and utilizing the features that work best for each team, as well as giving it some time to get used to without adapting it too much to the organization.

Reviewers recommend Rally Software over Atlassian Jira, finding it more intuitive and easier to use. They praise Rally as a comprehensive solution for Agile teams, automating the entire Agile practice. Rally is particularly recommended for organizations planning to adopt the Scaled Agile Framework Methodology (SAFe). However, users suggest checking out Jira for more add-ons and cheaper options but still highly recommend Rally over Jira.

Users suggest considering other project/product management tools before making a decision about CA Agile Central's future availability due to recent acquisition concerns. They also recommend thoroughly testing other options in the market that provide similar functionality at a lower cost. Additionally, users highlight that CA Agile Central is well-suited for large organizations and recommend having at least one person familiar with the software for a smoother transition. They also suggest using Assembla instead of CA Agile Central as an alternative option.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-17 of 17)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Kathy Ding | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Great to use as a requirements repository for software
  • Great for creating sprints and assigning user stories as work
  • Great for exporting requirements and defects for reporting
  • The UI for sprint work is not visually as helpful as Jira's
  • Cannot customize fields within defects and user stories within different teams if a different team owns the license
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • It does help us keep track of velocity and where we missed the mark.
  • It lets you see your completed to planned ratio.
  • It allows a clear view to project success throughout the organization.
  • It is overly complicated in some views.
  • Project Filtering seems buggy. Pinning a project does not always seem to help. Seems to default back to previous projects.
  • Whereas it is great for project reporting, it is not nearly as easy as Jira for devs to use.
Evgueny Lemasov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Easy to set up, plan and estimate user stories.
  • Easy track hours and update "to do" hours.
  • Iteration Burn Down report is the best.
  • Project development process is standard for all teams and customers.
  • Rally Software monthly price for user is a little bit expensive.
  • It is a little bit hard to set up relation between Epic stories vs Child US.
  • Search by text is hard when you have a 2-3 year old project.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Organizes work into well-defined structures
  • Allows useful metrics to be collected
  • Is very customizable depending on what each team member wants to see
  • Has a wealth of features and can be used in many ways, depending on the organization's needs and desires
  • The user interface is slightly "clunky"
  • It is easy to overwrite others' changes if you haven't refreshed your page in a while, since updates do not happen automatically
  • For my team's needs, there are way too many features and fields and it can be confusing to dig through that to find the subset we use
Sourav Singla ,Safe Agilist, CSP,  ICP-ACC, CSM, CSPO, SSM, LSSG | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • There are dashboards that provide friendly and useful metrics at the team, program and portfolio levels which help get an easy and quick visual representation of what's going on.
  • Story management made easier, It offers a quick way of quickly entering a number of user stories without losing the overview, by just typing the title and selecting a few attributes directly in the overview screen.
  • Sprint management is seamless in CA Agile Central . It allows you to drag stories from the backlog to the sprints and back again. When a story is dragged into an sprint, it automatically checks the velocity for that sprint and indicates how many more story points can be chipped in. No more manual checking needed by scrum master with respect to allocation and team velocity.
  • Though CA Agile Central has many inbuilt apps, but it also has an App-SDK that allows you to build free app extensions using JavaScript and HTML. So, as per their needs, teams can customize & build various apps & dashboards.
  • Dashboard is an awesome feature which allows you to select and drag panels with all kinds of graphical information about the current sprints and releases.
  • It offers tremendous support for scaled Agile & almost all scaling frameworks are supported specifically tuned to SAFe .
  • CA Agile Central includes several applications but it also integrates well with JIRA, Confluence, Jenkins, Eclipse, Subversion, IBM, HP, Salesforce.com and many other products to allow users to organize projects to their specifications. So you can still use JIRA at a team level & CA Agile Central at the program & portfolio level for efficient tracking & management.
  • The custom tags are very helpful in segregating the user stories based on the project needs. Even though it's a very small feature, it is very effective ( you will realize why specifically if you are using JIRA).
  • CA Central Agile enables agile delivery with ease and provides comprehensive features to track time-boxes, Work In Progress items of the forecast increments.
  • Backlog management is hassle free since you can either drag and drop your user stories to the desired position on the backlog, or change a setting and manually enter priorities as a number.
  • Workflow is fixed in CA Agile Central & can not be customized as per your team needs, which can be easily carried out in JIRA. Example: In CA Agile Central we have states “Defined”, “In progress”, “Completed” and “Accepted” and there is no way to change those names or add new states into it.
  • Burn down charts can be generated only with fixed attributes. So if your team is not burning hours or your team does not create tasks, you will not get to see burn down charts.
  • Dependencies on stories cannot be managed properly here and it is easy to lose them. Also, after a change is done, instead of returning to the last page, it moves to home page.
  • Some of the options, are not available when the user story is viewed in the short view at the right pane. Most of the options are visible in the detailed view only. Trivial issue but very frustrating.
  • UI needs improvement. Every screen there are no popup windows. Its single frame UI makes it very difficult to open different tasks/stories & more frustrating if the senior management wants to track various stories or teams.
  • CA Agile Central comes as full kit of functionalities and you can not customize it. In JIRA we can buy plugins & only pay for the features we are using.
February 01, 2018

Review of Rally

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Highly customizable.
  • Managing user stories are easy. Ability to split them for next iteration makes the job much easier.
  • Integrates well with Jama.
  • Ability to create test cases.
  • Ability to link between user stories, test set, release and iterations.
  • Report generation can be improved. More filters can be added.
  • Would like to have an easy way of integrating with ALM.
  • Cant find enough documents for help online.
October 25, 2017

Love Rally!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Portfolio Planning features allows all team members to understand how individual stories and tasks roll up to larger milestones and releasable features.
  • Highly customizable visual feedback - CA Agile Central allows each user to create their own work space and also allows creation and sharing of custom visualizations for the product and engineering teams.
  • Artifact Edits are a straightforward mix of inline editing of common fields and detailed updates of entire artifact records.
  • Drag and drop artifact arrangement has gotten better in the past few releases, but is still a bit difficult to use.
  • Integrations with customer-facing bug tracking systems is possible, but requires more direct intervention than expected.
  • Renaming the product from Rally to CA Agile Central is confusing in the market - Rally was a known entity and even CA has to call their own solution "CA Agile Central (formerly Rally)." Not good.
Bob Lieberman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Handle the complexities of multiple teams.
  • Visual indicators for individual story states.
  • Adaptable as your teams go through the learning curve in Agility.
  • Portfolio management... poor graphical presentation of portfolio (as compared to Aha! for example).
  • Release management... the model and implementation are not cohesive, require many manual steps to maintain release plan integrity, seems to support SAFe at the expense of other, more Agile, practices.
  • Visualization, in general... minimal capability for user-defined charting (unless you want to do SDK programming), and most canned charts offered are with an old internal SDK that doesn't support new features
  • My big gripe is that in the two years we've had the product, an unbelievably SMALL amount of work appears to have been done. Glaring gaps and inconsistencies (conceptual and practical) continue to go unaddressed, while apparently great effort is being spent on new features having marginal utility.
  • Based on this experience I have concerns for the ability of CA to bring the product up to modern standards and to restore its conceptual integrity after years of piecemeal incremental improvement. For a large development team, they don't seem to be delivering much new value.
Joseph Ruffolo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The ability to tailor the tool for each product. For example some simpler projects can be managed with simple user stories, a Kanban process and board. Large projects are managed with iterations, releases, tasks and burn down charts.
  • Create a home dashboard and customize it to show user stories and tasks assigned to you and a personal burn down chart.
  • A portfolio management capability where you can link and view the entire hierarchy from theme to initiative to feature to user story(s) and finally to tasks.
  • User management is pretty basic and could be better. For example more filters and reports and more ability to do mass updates.
  • The report generator is very, very basic and is not WYSIWYG. It has limited filters to generate reports. Often a Scrum master will need to export data to Excel or a tool like Crystal Reports to get enhanced reporting capability.
Dmitry Shyshkin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Plan sprints for agile/scrum lifecycle
  • Create and submit software defects
  • Create user stories and tasks
  • Not too user friendly interface
  • Defect management is not the best I have seen
  • Could add more fields for defects
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • structuring teams separately in a clean way. You can add as much teams as you want, and guarantee each team's work would stay separate in browsing, graphs and analytics.
  • detailed menus and drop-downs listing of features - technically it covers all there is of agile aspects and some more
  • ability to set your email notifications on/off
  • ability to split user stories into the next iteration if work isn't done in the previous one - no need to duplicate your user story manually
  • the service was intermittently down, sometimes for several hours.
  • Rally is a very large powerful tool, and that also is the reason why it can't be a good fit for small teams who want simpler interfaces and way less features.
  • loading pages is slow, add to that if you (like me) keep it open all day after signing in, the systems logs you out automatically.
  • pening multiple windows (on separate tabs) has some problematic issues esp. when your sessions expires, and you will need to sign in to all other tabs one by one. Also if you attempt to sign in again on one tab, all the other tabs redirect to the same page of the first tab you signed in.
  • a steep learning curve for agile beginners/novice team member - leaving those members to use the tool without any training makes it almost impossible for them to know what they must do to get by their daily tasks
  • not enough free documentation online
Megan Kakitsubo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Their easy to view Kanban board allows the viewers to understand what's in progress, what needs to be done, and what can be released and what is done all in one go. Because our team also practices weekly optimization, the user stories on the backlog are ordered in terms of urgency (allowing users to start stories that are on the top of the stack easily.
  • Rally's customer support is extensive as they have videos/recorded demos as well as phone support if anything goes wrong with the software or if something functionality is unclear
  • Rally's reporting tool is extensive and allows custom reporting for different users to create their own reports based on their business objective.
  • This software has many features and it's great but I have heard that the project managers do not use the entire package of features making this software quite expensive for what they actually use it for.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Gives you a good view into your current active work week/ active sprint
  • Provides a pretty good way to look at prior sprints
  • It has so much flexibility and power that it actually makes simpler tasks complex – particularly backlog management and scheduling things into releases and sprints.
  • It has a tough job of managing “epics” – things with 100s of small features, and being able to prioritize across them. Typically we have 2 epics in a release. We have no problem prioritizing epics, but it is hard to prioritize “stories” across epics. There are typically dozens of stories in an epic.
Gary Allison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Rapid visibility of progress or problems across large number of teams.
  • Portfolio view allows Product Management clear visibility across all their product features.
  • Strong feedback metrics for the team and individuals as to status and meeting commitments.
  • Visual UI quickly gives teams visibility into their sprint progress.
  • Helps enables Agile structure for widely dispersed teams.
  • Supports traditional scrum and also Kanban.
  • Completely open API give access to just about everything and enables integration to other systems you may be using.
  • Team at Rally is very responsive to needs and feedback. They also have a strong SE team to help with best practices. Pretty easy to get one of their Product Managers on the phone to talk roadmap.
  • Strong community to help with questions and their forums are very active.
  • Traditional Agile metrics like sprint velocity and burndown are built in, but still challenging to get metrics beyond these.
  • Not an inexpensive solution.
Kyle Kost | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • It is a software specifically built for Agile team management.
  • It covers multiple agile methodologies.
  • It is easy to use and learn.
  • The hosted version requires no maintenance and works well.
  • Hosted version does not always work well on all browsers (minor issue).
Return to navigation