Rally Office Hours:
October 16, 2025

Summary

Rally Office Hours on October 16, 2025, kicked off with a warm welcome and an engaging icebreaker, asking attendees to share their favorite sports. The session, which is recorded and available on the Software Academy, covered a range of topics from exciting new product announcements to in-depth Q&A sessions and upcoming event news.

Getting Started: Welcome and Housekeeping

• Interactive Start: The meeting began with a fun request for everyone to type their favorite sport into the chat, sparking some lively discussion, including "nerd sports" like Rugby Barbie.
• Introductions: Attendees listed as "iPhone" were kindly asked to identify themselves. John Weston, the board manager, was on hand to capture all chat questions and add them to the team's user story card.
• Recording & Confidentiality: A reminder was given that the session was being recorded and by staying, participants consented to this. Confidentiality was also stressed, especially for anyone sharing their screen.
• Resource Availability: All office hour recordings are posted weekly to the Software Academy. They're indexed, making it easy to jump straight to Q&A, product announcements, or tips.
• Purpose of the Meeting: The aim is to address actionable, solvable questions, fostering collaboration among Broadcom staff and other customers. If a question turns into an enhancement request, attendees are guided to use the "Share your feedback" option in Rally.
• Regular Schedule: Rally Office Hours happen every Thursday from 12 PM to 1 PM Eastern Time. You can register via the Rally community.
• The Team: The session is supported by a dedicated team, including Asya from product management, Eric, Rusty, and John Weston from solution engineering, Todd (RTE), and Mike Lentini from the Rally product marketing team.
• Core Values: The team strives to make each session a chance to learn, make a difference, and have some fun.

Exciting New Product Feature: AI-Driven Artifact Breakdown

Asya unveiled a groundbreaking new feature: AI-driven breakdown of existing artifacts into smaller, manageable children.

• What it Does: This AI capability allows users to automatically break down:

• Features into user stories.
• User stories into tasks.
• Epics, themes, or strategies into their relevant child artifacts.

• Key Benefits:

• Time-Saving: Automates a typically manual and time-consuming process.
• Consistency: Ensures that all generated artifacts are consistent and well-structured by utilizing templates.
• Contextual Understanding: The AI uses extensive context, including feature descriptions and any existing peer user stories, to generate relevant children.

• How it Works:

• Look for a "Create with AI" button at every artifact level in Rally.
• Clicking it generates child artifacts, which are clearly marked with an "AI" prefix and an "AI assisted" flag, signaling that human review is needed.
• The AI will attempt to fill in all template sections and adhere to work rules and required fields. For example, if your template includes "As a user, I want...", the AI will follow that structure.
• Future updates will even allow the AI to consider attachments when creating artifacts.

• Availability: This feature is currently available for early access. If your AI module is enabled, you can contact AIA to have it activated for your subscription, with a full rollout expected next quarter.

In-Depth Q&A Session

The session also featured a lively Q&A, addressing several customer queries.

• Deleting Projects and Teams (Christopher):

• Concern: What happens when teams with active work are closed or deleted?
• Resolution: Jason confirmed that features owned by a deleted team would be lost. The recommendation was for the scrum master to reassign parent capabilities before deletion.
• Finding Open Work: Christopher's logic for identifying open work (leaf story count > 0, percent done by story count < 100, and excluding "canceled" in the name) was considered sound, with a suggestion to ensure consistent naming conventions and consider using tags for canceled work.
• Portfolio-Level Filtering: Filtering for user story accepted dates at the portfolio level might require a different approach or a support case.

• Tracking Actual Task Hours in Work View (Tara):

• Problem: Tara's team was logging "actuals" for tasks, but the "time spent" field was blank, and the "actuals" field wasn't appearing in work views.
• Explanation: Eric clarified that "time spent" requires the time tracker to be enabled, while "actuals" is a separate, configurable field.
• Workaround & Support: While "actuals" might not be directly available in work views, the "Track Tasks" page offers a workaround. The absence of "actuals" in work views was deemed worthy of a support case. It was also noted that many Agile teams don't track actuals at such a granular level.

• Replacing SDK-Based Apps (Brian):

• Need: Brian sought recommendations for replacing a custom SDK-based report that tracks work items moving in and out of a release.
• Solution: Christie from Product explained that new core widgets are being released to replace community apps. Content is also being developed to assist with custom app replacement, and Rally partners specializing in this are available.
• Specific App: A new core widget for release scope change (for user stories and defects) is planned for the next quarter, which should address Brian's need before the SDK is deprecated. Brian was advised to contact his Solution Engineer or Brandy Wrathman for help.

• Performance Metrics & Bottlenecks (Taran):

• Request: Taran asked for help with overall lead time and identifying bottlenecks.
• Insights: Eric demonstrated the "Cycle Time" chart on the team board, which shows lead time from initiation to delivery. This chart provides:

• Average time in value-added and non-value-added states (blocked, ready).
• Flow efficiency percentage.
• Breakdown by individual stories and defects.

• Sprint Performance: For delivery performance within a sprint, "Planned vs. Unplanned Work Items" and "Slipped Work Items" widgets in "Custom Views" were recommended.
• Data Delay: Mark raised an issue about a data delay in the "Slipped Work Items" chart, making it unavailable for Wednesday retrospectives. Eric suggested opening a support case to investigate this.

• Viewing Releases in Large Projects (Graham):

• Challenge: Graham wanted an easy way to see which releases are involved in large, long-spanning projects like epics or capabilities.
• Current Limitations: Eric explained that milestone associations at the feature level don't automatically roll up to the epic level. There's no current automatic visualization for this, and it would require manually tagging milestones at higher levels or using bulk editing, which is still a manual process.

• Help Section and Documentation Accuracy (Alexis):

• Query: Alexis questioned the accuracy of documents in the help section, especially regarding best practices for teams working on multiple products.
• Clarification: Eric noted that while the technical aspects of Rally documentation are regularly updated with new functionality, good practices remain fairly constant over time. Alexis suggested making the help section more easily accessible.

Upcoming Events and Resources

The session concluded with a brief rundown of important events and resources.

• Product Management Discussion: Matt Gorbsky was set to discuss how product management bridges the gap between strategy and execution, with a QR code leading to the Bright Talk page for live viewing or replay.
• Roadmap Updates: Quarterly product roadmaps will also be available on the Bright Talk page.
• "10 Minutes with Lance Knight": A replay of this conversation with Value Stream Architect Lance Knight is available on demand.
• UX Research: Rally is conducting UX research for new AI capabilities, and a survey is accessible via the help section.
• ValueOps Academy: A QR code was provided for the ValueOps Academy, which hosts all recordings, including the office hours.
• PI Planning Invitation: Customers are invited to nominate themselves for quarterly PI planning. The November 3-6 session is almost full, but nominations are open for February.
• Rally Community: Additional QR codes were shared to encourage participation in the Rally community.

Note: This summary was generated with the assistance of an artificial intelligence language model. While we strive for accuracy and quality, please note that the summary may not be entirely error-free. We recommend independently verifying the content and consulting with a product expert for specific advice or information. We do not assume any responsibility or liability for the use or interpretation of this content.

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