Rally Software Enhances Visualization of AgileZen Kanban Board

BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Rally®, the leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM), today announced new filtering features and performance metrics in its AgileZen product. New, user-defined filtering makes it easy to focus on and measure the most important work items. In addition, through Rally's new non-profit discount program, educational and non-profit organizations now receive a 50% discount on Unlimited, Plus and Pro AgileZen accounts with a one-year service commitment.

"The whole value of Kanban is visualization, so we've added new filtering features without sacrificing the simple, elegant way AgileZen visually represents your work in process," said Niki Kohari, product manager for AgileZen at Rally. "Board filtering is much more effective at managing multiple lines of work on one board than the 'swim-lane' techniques some tools use."

New, user-defined filtering makes it easy for users to focus on what's most important by fading or hiding content that doesn't apply to a filter. Filtering also enables users to:

• Filter by colors, tags, owners, priority, story size, text and more
• Toggle between fading or hiding information
• Create, name and save filters to re-apply them at any time
• Share filters with individuals and teams

"AgileZen's biggest strength is its clarity and simplicity. It provides a visual way to represent our workflow, and it's flexible enough to allow us to continuously improve our processes," said Sibylle Schwarz, head of project management at SilverStripe. "By reducing complexity, AgileZen allows us to make more informed business decisions and focus on our main priority, which is delivering the best web experiences to our clients. In over a decade as a project manager, I've never seen developers or clients as excited about a project management tool as they are about AgileZen."

In the coming weeks, user-defined filtering applied to the performance screen will enable teams to better forecast outcomes and measure process improvements. Additional enhancements to the performance screen will include the ability to define custom date ranges for performance metrics and the addition of the following new metrics that enable users to tune value streams to find and reduce waste in work processes:

• Throughput displays exactly how many stories were completed in a specified time frame
• Wait Time displays the cumulative amount of time on average stories spend idle, waiting for a hand-off
• Blocked Time displays the cumulative amount of time on average stories spend blocked

Non-profit Discount Program

Rally also launched its educational and non-profit discount program for AgileZen customers. Employees of qualified educational or non-profit organizations will receive a 50% discount on AgileZen Unlimited, Plus and Pro accounts with a one-year service commitment. In addition, Rally offers open source projects a free AgileZen account that supports one project and unlimited users. Simply sign-up for a free account on AgileZen's pricing page, and then send an email with links to the project web site and source control repository. Discounts are subject to certain conditions and limitations. Please contact [email protected] for details.

Pricing and Availability

AgileZen is immediately available in Unlimited, Plus, Pro, Personal and Free account subscriptions. Visit AgileZen's pricing page for a comparison of account subscriptions, providing different levels of access to projects, collaborators, file storage, email notification, IM notification and SSL encryption. For more information about how AgileZen helps users stay organized and work efficiently, visit www.agilezen.com.

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 to achieve superior ROI, reduce risk and increase productivity. 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. Rally's products, including AgileZen, currently support more than 3,000 corporate customers, 68,000 projects and 123,000 users in 60 countries. For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

Rally, the Rally logo, Rally Software Development, and AgileZen are trademarks of Rally Software Development Corp. Third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Rally