Using Rally Software to Implement the Scaled Agile Framework® A Comprehensive Solution for Portfolio, Program, and Team Levels of Adoption

In 2012, Dean Leffingwell released the Scaled Agile Portfolio Section Framework® (SAFe), “a proven, publicly available Portfolio Managers, Product framework for applying Lean|Agile practices at enterprise Strategists, CIOs, PMOs scale.”1 While Agile is well understood at the team level, this framework codifies Program Section how to take Agile principles above the Team level and Product Managers, Program into the Program and Portfolio levels. This Agile Portfolio Managers, VP of Products, VP of Development, PMOs Management framework comes at a time when more and more organizations adopting Agile at scale struggle Team Section to keep up with the fast pace of Agile teams’ software Product Owners, ScrumMasters, delivery. Developers, and Testers This paper describes how Rally Software provides a comprehensive solution for implementing SAFe in your organization. While you will find many vendors providing Agile support for the Team level, Rally provides support at each and every one of the three SAFe levels. The paper is organized by the SAFe levels - Portfolio, Program and Team - so you may skip to the section most pertinent to your role in the organization.

This paper assumes you are familiar with SAFe. To learn about SAFe, visit: www.scaledagileframework.com

www.rallydev.com ©2013 Rally Software Development 1 Portfolio Level This level translates the organization’s strategy into a set of investment themes, business, and architectural epics. Investment themes track budget allocations and help monitor and respect those allocations as people plan. Business and architectural epics are largescale development initiatives that realize the value of investment themes. systems provide a quantitative, transparent basis for economic decision-making. In Rally, portfolio items represent artifacts for the Portfolio and Program levels of SAFe. By default, SAFe includes Business Epics, Architectural Epics and Features at those levels, but “there is no perfect hierarchy” so you may create any number of additional levels, for instance, to track sub-epics. Rally Portfolio Manager provides the Portfolio Management Team visibility at the Epic level.

Rally Support for the Portfolio Level SAFe Concepts Rally SAFe Support Customizable artifact hierarchy Unlimited number of portfolio item with customizable names Portfolio backlog Portfolio item grid Investment theme Portfolio item Investment Category field % budget allocation Portfolio alignment report Epics (business and architectural) “Epic” portfolio item Type field Epic lightweight business case Portfolio item formatted Description field Epic business value Portfolio item Preliminary Estimate field Epic size Portfolio item Preliminary Estimate field Epic estimated development timeline Portfolio item Planned Start Date field (start/completion date) Portfolio item Planned End Date field Epic rank Portfolio Item Rank field Kanban Systems Portfolio Kanban Board Metrics Epic success criteria Portfolio Kanban exit policies

Portfolio Level view in Rally www.rallydev.com ©2013 Rally Software Development 2 Program Level The Program level is the level where we see most customers struggle and where SAFe provides some of its highest value by clearly describing how to address typical challenges. This level focuses on planning and tracking the business value that Agile teams deliver. The key challenge is in channeling Agile teams’ execution power to drive desired business outcomes. After all, Agile is just a means to an end: to deliver more valuable software faster. Because Agile has historically started at the Team level, we see many organizations get lost in “a ocean of user stories” managed by Agile teams, with no visibility into actual business outcome delivered. Rally Portfolio Manager provides and Release Management teams with visibility at the Feature level.

Rally Support for the Program Level SAFe Concepts Rally SAFe Support Program Backlog Portfolio Dashboard Grid showing Feature portfolio items Agile Release Train PSIs Portfolio item Planning Timebox field Program Roadmap Portfolio Dashboard Grid per PSI Features Portfolio item with ‘Feature’ Type Feature cost of delay Portfolio item Value Score Field Metrics Feature burndown Portfolio item burnup Feature completeness Portfolio item %done fields with Red Green Yellow indicator Program performance report Portfolio item grid showing %done fields (by size or by count) PSI progress report Portfolio Dashboard grid with %done and filtered by PSI

Program Level view in Rally www.rallydev.com ©2013 Rally Software Development 3 Team Level Rally is a leader in Agile project management, so this paper won’t attempt to fully cover Rally’s extensive support at the Team level. Rather, this paper highlights Rally’s key Team level features in support of SAFe. There are many vendors selling Agile development tools for uncoordinated teams, (Atlassian Jira + GreenHopper, Collabnet Scrumworks, Thoughtworks Mingle, and more) however, support for coordinating teams is a tenet of SAFe. Rally provides Agile Teams with unique rollup capabilities in support of the SAFe synchronized team cadence. This synchronization is key to ensuring that SAFe coordination is in place. That way, Program and Portfolio levels don’t get lost in the ocean of user stories created by uncoordinated teams that have adopted software solutions independently from each other.

Team Level view in Rally Conclusion We hope this paper helped describe how to implement SAFe with Rally. If you need assistance with your SAFe implementation, contact us. Rally’s certified SAFe instructors provide implementation services, Rally Portfolio Manager implementation workshops, and a host of other services to help you scale your Agile adoption. Contact us at [email protected] for more details.

1 http://scaledagileframework.com/ 2 Leffingwell, Dean (2011). Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Boston: Pearson Education. www.rallydev.com ©2013 Rally Software Development 4