Rally - How To Use Itaka “Why absolutely everything you do

with it is wrong”

What is Rally?

• A tool for managing SCRUM

• If you don’t use SCRUM, you’re doing it wrong.

Some Terms

• Product Backlog

• Features/Stories

• Iterations

• Releases

• Test Plans

• Defects

Project Inception

• Work out a couple of themes for a project

• State those themes as stories

• Create a backlog for the project

• Put those stories in the backlog

What’s the Backlog for?

• Stories that haven’t yet:

• been defined

• been estimated

• been prioritised

• You should have multiple backlogs

Story Hierarchies

• Stories can have sub-stories

• Sub-stories elaborate and expand the parent story

• Keep breaking stories up until you hit the 1-3 day mark

• Keep breaking stories up until acceptance criteria are small

Make A Booking

Find A Room

Pick The Dates

Enter Guest Details

Pay For Booking

Pay With Credit Card

Pay With Gift Voucher

Obtain Card Details

Charge Credit Card

Record Accounting Details

Validate Gift Voucher Balance

Handle Declined Cards

Reduce Gift Voucher Balance

Story Estimation

• Guess-timates - “I think this will take XYZ”

• Rule of 3 - keep guess-timates between 1 to 3 ‘units’

• Units are:

• days, weeks, months, quarters, years

Task Estimations

• Stories have tasks

• Task are created when stories leave the backlog - NOT BEFORE!

• Task estimations are “How long will this take me right now?”

• Tasks do not depend on other stories

• Tasks are in hours - Rule of 3 applies

Projects vs Teams

• Projects have Backlogs

• Projects have Releases

• Projects DO NOT have iterations

• Teams have iterations.

Iteration Planning

• Populate team backlog

• Pull in stories from project backlogs

• Drag “defined” stories to iteration

• Add tasks to stories

• Don’t add too many stories

• Don’t plan more than 2 iterations ahead

Rally As A Kanban Tool

• See the Task Board

Release Planning

• Plan releases around stories

• Use the highest level story possible

• All sub-stories automatically included

• Release when stories are done

When in Doubt - Go Faster, Not Slower

• Use shorter iterations - 1 week?

• Focus on getting the process right

• Use smaller releases - 1 story?

• Keep team backlog short