Rally Office Hours:
August 14, 2025

Summary

Product Announcements

Upcoming features for Capacity Planning were detailed:

• Capacity Plan End State: A new "finalized date" option will be introduced to freeze capacity plan calculations and numbers upon completion. This prevents current data updates (like a feature finishing late) from skewing historical plan views, especially in the Plan of Plans screen.
• Publish Plan Enhancement: When publishing a plan, users will gain the ability to selectively choose which fields (such as Release, Planned Start Date, or Planned End Date) they want to update on the associated work items. This addresses the need for users who manually manage start and end dates but still want to set the Release field automatically.
• App Catalog Widget Account: A new subscription widget will soon be available for Custom Views, replacing the app catalog functionality in deprecated custom pages. It will allow the addition of HTML widgets and include features like a preview mode for subscription administrators during testing and the ability to tag widgets for easier organization.

Q&A Highlights

The session addressed several user questions, focusing on actionable solutions within Rally:

• Plan Estimate Rollup: A user inquired about summarizing the "Plan Estimate" field when grouping work items by project in the Workview page. The speakers confirmed this rollup is not a current capability in that view or Custom List 2.0. They suggested using a custom view with charting widgets as the best alternative to aggregate this data by project or team.
• Recording Availability: Office Hours recordings are officially posted to the Broadcom Software Academy by Tuesday of the following week, though they are often available sooner, usually by Friday.
• Pie Chart Filtering for Tags: A user sought to filter the tags displayed in a pie chart to show only specific tags, even if the underlying stories have multiple tags. It was confirmed that the current pie chart app does not allow this visual filtering. Alternatives were demonstrated using the Progress Widget and Query Tile in a custom view to show the count and percentage of stories associated with the desired tags.
• Unfinished User Stories (Split vs. Push): A customer asked for the best practice in handling unfinished stories at the end of a sprint—splitting them or carrying them forward (pushing). While the speakers noted it is a company-by-company decision, carrying stories forward often results in more stable metrics. The host offered to share a white paper outlining the pros and cons of different approaches from a metrics perspective.
• Cycle Time Metrics Discrepancy: A discussion arose about a discrepancy between the total "Cycle Time" and the sum of "Time in States" on the Team Board chart. The speakers advised opening a support ticket for a deeper investigation, noting that discrepancies can occur because adding averages may not equal the total average. It was also mentioned that cards moving backward in the workflow can affect the total cycle time.
• Portfolio Cycle Time: A question was asked about a cycle time function for portfolio items (like Features). The speakers pointed out that a cycle time report is available on the Portfolio Kanban board under "Charts," though its specifications are currently more limited compared to the team board reports.
• Value-Added States (Portfolio): A user asked about the meaning and intent of "value-added states" for portfolio items. Value-added states are crucial for calculating flow efficiency and identifying blockages in the workflow. States often excluded from value-added time are temporary holding points (e.g., "preparing for testing") or the "completed" state. The speakers noted that this concept has not yet been fully defined in the Portfolio Kanban but will be considered for future development.

Upcoming Events and News

The session concluded with announcements for:

• A replay of the Bright Talk webinar on "Breaking the Busy Trap."
• The upcoming Q3 product roadmap release.
• A webinar on August 26th titled "Frictionless by Design," detailing how Rally and Clarity integrate to manage capital expenditure (Capex) and time sheets.
• An invitation for customers to participate as guests in the Rally Engineering quarterly PI Planning event, which includes curated workshops and organic discussions.

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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