Rally Software Enables Agile Project Managers to Align Development and Portfolio Management Priorities

BOULDER, Colo. and SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Rally®, a title sponsor of this week's Agile 2011 conference, enhances its Agile ALM platform and introduces new coaching services that enable Agile project managers (http://www.rallydev.com/events/agile_webinar_series/agile_project_managers_details) to align development investments with business priorities. New integrations with leading enterprise project portfolio management (PPM) solutions help extend agility across the enterprise by connecting the project management office (PMO) with Agile development teams.

Rally continues to extend agility beyond development and into the enterprise by offering:

• A new Agile Portfolio Steering coaching service that helps the PMO apply Agile techniques to portfolio management that make organizations more responsive to fast-changing market needs.
  • Move from a reliance on executing against an annual prediction and up-front plan to active steering of your investments and roadmaps in response to market feedback.
  • Help ensure value calculations are as important and rich as cost estimates.
  • Learn to prioritize, track and steer initiatives for programs and teams using multi-process Agile.
• Enhancements to Rally's leading demand management solution, Rally Idea Manager, help strengthen feedback loops between the PMO and development teams to transform high-value user requests into innovative products. Updates include:
  • A new reputation system and leaderboard to highlight and reward users actively engaged in the user community.
  • Customizable idea tabs for users and product managers to easily locate and access top-ranked ideas.
  • Improved integrations link new ideas to existing Rally stories or promote and update idea statuses based on any Rally story state.

Rally provides the most comprehensive set of PPM integrations of any Agile ALM platform on the market today. Creating a single source of record for decision-making across the enterprise, Rally is announcing integrations with leading project portfolio management solutions, including:

• Oracle's Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) 8 - Analyze critical data from Agile development teams and adjust investment priorities within the organization's portfolio of IT projects.
• Daptiv™ - Gain executive-level visibility across project portfolios with multi-process Agile support.
• Planisware™ 5.2 - Collaborate and improve efficiency between product managers and Agile development teams.
• CA Clarity™ PPM, built by Pervasive Software, available September 2011 - Integrates Agile development cost information with total project costing and financial planning.
• AgileEVM - Automatically imports Rally release data and iteration outcomes to create reports for managing Agile software portfolios.

Comments on the news:

"Much has been written about the benefits of Agile development, and it has been proven that Agile development teams consistently deliver higher-quality applications faster than those that follow traditional practices," Forrester Research, Inc. wrote in the report "The PMO In An Agile World: Can't We All Just Get Along?," August 3, 2011. "Organizations should consider adopting application development management tools or Agile project management tools to enable developers to work in their familiar environment while still delivering necessary data for PMO status reporting."

"Organizations need an enterprise-class solution that provides visibility to their enterprise project portfolio while enabling teams to work with the tools and methodologies that make them the most productive," said Mike Sicilia, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle's Primavera Global Business Unit. "The integration between Oracle Primavera and Rally Enterprise Edition offers this flexibility to our customers by linking Agile development projects in Rally Enterprise Edition with enterprise projects and portfolios in Oracle's Primavera P6 EPPM.  This integration enables alignment and decision making across the entire portfolio, while helping to maximize workforce productivity."

"Rally continues to expand Agile practices outside of development to help create the Agile Enterprise," said Todd Olson, vice president of Products at Rally. "Now Rally's Agile ALM platform and services extend Agile to the Program Management Office to help companies steer their investment priorities in real-time and respond faster to changes in their markets."

To schedule Rally's Agile Portfolio Steering coaching service, contact your sales representative or [email protected]. Rally Idea Manager, available immediately, will be showcased this week in Rally's booth at Agile 2011. For more information, sign up for Rally's August 23rd webinar, "Calling Project Managers: Your Top 7 Agile Questions Answered," at http://www.rallydev.com/events/agile_webinar_series/ and read "Rally Idea Manager Improves Agile Feedback Loops" on the Agile Blog (http://www.rallydev.com/agileblog/2011/06/rally-idea-manager-improves-agile-feedback-loops/).

Rally is a Gold-level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).

About Rally

Rally is the recognized leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM). We are dedicated to helping organizations embrace Agile and Lean development practices that increase the pace of innovation and improve product quality. According to a study by QSM Associates, software-driven companies that rely on Rally's Agile ALM products and services are 50% faster to market and 25% more productive than industry averages. The company's experienced services group, including training through Agile University, guides companies through the organizational change required to become innovative, Agile businesses. Together, Rally's Agile ALM platform and its leading Kanban-based project collaboration tool, AgileZen, support more than 9,700 corporate customers, 126,000 projects and 112,000 users in 101 countries. For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

Rally, the Rally logo, Rally Software Development, Agile University and AgileZen are trademarks of Rally Software Development Corp. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Rally Software