Rally Software Previews Whole Solution for Scaling Agile to Strategic Levels

LOS ANGELES and ORLANDO, Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Rally®, the leader in Agile application lifecycle management (ALM), today previewed part of an integrated solution for extending Agile practices to strategic roadmap and portfolio planning levels. Code-named "Project Stratus," this new product and accompanying service offering results from collaborating with ten Rally customers who are extending Agile practices throughout their planning levels to respond faster to changing business priorities.

"Rally is helping our enterprise customers dramatically improve their time to market by scaling Agile methods outside of development. Over the last year, we've collaborated with our largest customers to define a new product and service offering for keeping development aligned with their portfolio decisions," said Ryan Martens, Rally's founder and CTO. "We're now ready for feedback from our larger community and I am publishing our experiences on Rally's Agile Blog (www.rallydev.com/agileblog). I invite our users to track our progress and help shape and support this new solution."

Rally is previewing Project Stratus, a new application that elevates Agile planning and tracking to roadmap and portfolio levels, this week at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration (AADI) Summit in Los Angeles, and at Agile Development Practices (ADP) East in Orlando. Based on collaboration with Rally customers, Project Stratus focuses at the PMO level on:

• Keeping development aligned with strategic business priorities
• Visualizing and managing projects and large features across the entire value stream
• Analyzing the roadmap to optimize delivery of value while minimizing risk
• Strengthening feedback loops between the PMO and development teams

"Stratus provides just the right balance of portfolio analysis and strategic planning capabilities," said Nina Schoen, PMO Director at Getty Images. "It works in tandem with Rally's Agile ALM platform to provide the immediate visibility I need to realistically plan projects that will deliver measurable business benefit."

Agile Strategic Planning Services

As an integral part of scaling and maturing Agile success at higher levels, Rally introduces a new Agile coaching service - Agile Strategic Planning. Starting with a two-day on-site engagement with product managers and your organization's PMO, teams learn how to extend Agile principles to strategic planning levels - including rolling-wave planning techniques for managing priorities, estimates and feedback loops. In addition to imparting key concepts for efficient value throughput, attendees will learn how to:

• Make investment decisions that emphasize value
• Produce an empirical roadmap that sets clear strategy and goals
• Establish a cadence of rolling-wave planning
• Create roadmap and feedback visualizations that identify future improvements
• Emphasize learning and adaptation to drive better results

Rally's Agile Strategic Planning Services are immediately available. Contact your sales representative or [email protected] to schedule a two-day on-site engagement.

Rally continues to collaborate with customers who are helping us iteratively refine Project Stratus. If you are interested in being considered for the Project Stratus preview program, contact your account managers, coaches or customer success representatives or email [email protected].

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. Rally's products, including AgileZen, currently support more than 3,000 corporate customers, 76,000 projects and 138,000 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 Software