From Projects to Products: How Rally Enables the Product Operating Model at Scale

Shifting from projects to products represents a fundamental change in how organizations deliver value. The Product Operating Model promises faster innovation, tighter alignment with customer needs, and more empowered teams. However, scaling it across the enterprise is where many stumble. When trying to scale, teams confront such common challenges as legacy organizational structures (for example, heavily matrixed project teams), siloed data (such as when strategy, portfolio, and team execution data are isolated), and disconnected tools (for example, when multiple team-level agile tools are employed). All these factors prevent enterprise-wide visibility. That’s where Rally comes in. Built to support modern, product-centric ways of working, Rally meets organizations wherever they are in their digital transformation, helping them turn the promise of the Product Operating Model into real, measurable progress.

Here are the key principles of the Product Operating Model:

• Persistent, cross-functional product teams
• Continuous delivery and customer feedback loops
• Funding aligned to products, not short-term projects
• Clear ownership and accountability by product
• End-to-end visibility into value streams
• Portfolio management to help connect the work of individual product teams

Rally: Built to power the Product Operating Model

Rally is an enterprise-class digital product management solution designed to scale agile practices across teams, programs, and portfolios. It’s a natural fit for organizations adopting a product-centric model.

Here’s how Rally helps bring the Product Operating Model to life:

1. Organize teams around value streams and product lines

Rally allows teams to be grouped by value streams or product lines, providing a clear structure for ownership and accountability. This structure mirrors the Product Operating Model’s goal of organizing teams around outcomes, not functions.

• With Rally, your product teams aren’t just working in silos—they’re delivering together with a shared vision.

2. Plan work by outcomes, not just output

In a Product Operating Model, success is measured by customer value, not just task completion. Rally supports this with powerful tools for roadmapping, feature planning, and value tracking—all aligned to business objectives.

• Link work directly to strategic goals and OKRs, so every story rolls up to impact.

3. Enable lean funding and capacity planning

One of the major shifts in a product model is how work gets funded. Especially when used with ValueOps, Rally supports Lean Portfolio Management, allowing organizations to fund value streams and persistent teams instead of short-term projects, without disrupting existing financial controls and governance.

• Plan and allocate capacity by team, feature, or initiative, making funding continuous and adaptive.

4. Deliver end-to-end visibility

Rally gives you real-time visibility across teams, features, and releases. Its dashboards and reporting capabilities help leaders track delivery progress and optimize flow.

• Make better decisions with a clear view of what’s working and where to remove friction.

5. Built-in feedback and learning loops

At the heart of the Product Operating Model is continuous improvement. Rally supports iterations, retrospectives, and customer-centric feedback, creating a culture of learning across the product lifecycle.

• Build products that evolve with your users, not just once, but always.

Final thoughts: From project to product with Rally

Transitioning to a Product Operating Model requires more than a mindset shift; it requires solutions that can scale with you and support product-based thinking at every level. Rally is purpose-built for this transformation, enabling enterprise-grade product management, portfolio alignment, and scalable agile execution. Unlike task-centric tools, Rally helps organizations connect strategy to delivery, align teams around outcomes, and achieve real, measurable results. If you're ready to move from project outputs to product outcomes, Rally provides the foundation to make that shift stick. Let us show you how!