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Rally Software a great for large self-directed teams
November 22, 2013

Rally Software a great for large self-directed teams

Gary Allison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Always the latest

Modules Used

  • Rally Unlimited

Overall Satisfaction

  • 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.
  • The visibility Rally gives into the actual development activities is phenomenal - for the team themselves as well as management. No need to have big project review meetings - the data is all right there.
  • The product is fairly easy to use, which means that the development teams actually use it, as a result they build better sprint plans and are more likely to deliver what was intended by the Product Manager.
  • I don't know how you measure precisely the ROI from greater predictability, but it is clearly high. When used with other solid planning processes, the visibility Rally offers can give you much greater predictability of a given team's future performance and of the entire organization as a whole.
  • Rally facilitates significant improvements in communication between Product Management and Engineering because it offers visibility and clear connections between business initiatives and individual user stories that the team is delivering.
  • Continual improvements in the tool delivered by Rally
  • Tight integration with our Agile processes
  • Rally still the best tool in this market
Their pricing structure is pretty flat - you get lower per seat prices with more seats obviously. Buying at end of quarter will sometimes get you a little better price, but not huge savings. Sometime in the past, I was able to get a discount for being a reference, but now that they have grown and are gaining in market position, this is probably less the case. I have found them extremely easy to work with overall. Never had a problem.

Usability

Great UI, recent refresh was terrific. Great graphs and metrics, inline editing for updates, and a multitude of views on sprint progress make for a great team collaboration experience. There is also an active community and forums so that if you do need help, it is readily available.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Viewing team and individual status is very easy in the Team status or Iteration status menus.
  • A complete view of all features is visible in the Portfolio Items page.
  • Burndown charts are right there at the top of every iteration page.
  • The landing page has a completely customizable dashboard where each user can add their own apps, reports, lists, etc. Very cool.
  • Complete integration available for Eclipse so you can update your task hours right in the IDE.
  • If there is a metric not visible in a plug in app or report, then you may have to resort to the API which can be heavy lifting.
Yes, but I don't use it