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Using Rally Software to Implement
the Scaled Agile FrameworkTM
A Comprehensive Solution for Portfolio, Program,
and Team Levels of Adoption

In 2012, Dean Leffingwell released the Scaled Agile Framework
(SAFe), “a proven, publicly available framework for applying
Lean|Agile practices at enterprise scale.”1 While Agile software
development is well understood at the team level, this framework
codifies how to take Agile principles above the Team level and into
the Program and Portfolio levels. This Agile Portfolio Management
framework comes at a time when more and more organizations
adopting Agile at scale struggle to keep up with the fast pace of
Agile teams’ software delivery.

This paper describes how Rally Software provides a comprehensive
solution for implementing SAFe in your organization. While you will
find many vendors providing Agile support for the Team level, Rally
provides support at each and every one of the three SAFe levels.
This stems from Rally’s close cooperation with Leffingwell during
the development of Rally Portfolio Manager and the influence of
Leffingwell’s Agile Software Requirements2 book, from which the
Scaled Agile Framework was created.

The paper is organized by the SAFe levels - Portfolio, Program and
Team - so you may skip to the section most pertinent to your role in
the organization.

Portfolio Managers, Product Strategists, CIOs,
Portfolio Section
PMOs

Product Managers, Program Managers, VP of
Program Section
Products, VP of Development, PMOs

Product Owners, ScrumMasters, Developers,
Team Section
and Testers

NOTE: This paper assumes you are familiar with SAFe. To learn about SAFe, visit
www.scaledagileframework.com.

1
http://scaledagileframework.com/
2
Leffingwell, Dean (2011). Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices
for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Boston: Pearson Education.

www.rallydev.com ©2012 Rally Software Development 1

Using Rally Software to Implement the Scaled Agile FrameworkTM

Portfolio Level
This level translates the organization’s strategy into a set of
investment themes, business, and architectural epics. Investment
themes track budget allocations and help monitor and respect those
allocations as people plan. Business and architectural epics are large-
scale development initiatives that realize the value of investment
themes. Kanban systems provide a quantitative, transparent basis for
economic decision-making.

In Rally, portfolio items represent artifacts for the Portfolio and
Program levels of SAFe. By default, SAFe includes Business Epics,
Architectural Epics and Features at those levels, but “there is no
perfect hierarchy” so you may create any number of additional levels,
for instance, to track sub-epics.



Rally Portfolio Manager provides the Portfolio Management Team
visibility at the Epic level.

Rally Support for the Portfolio Level
SAFe Concepts Rally SAFe Support
Unlimited number of portfolio item
Customizable artifact hierarchy
with customizable names

Portfolio backlog Portfolio item grid

Portfolio item Investment Category
Investment theme
field

% budget allocation Portfolio alignment report

Epics (business and architectural) “Epic” portfolio item Type field
Portfolio item formatted Descrip-
Epic lightweight business case
tion field
Portfolio item Preliminary Estimate
Epic business value
field
Portfolio item Preliminary Estimate
Epic size
field
Portfolio item Planned Start Date
Epic estimated development field
timeline (start/completion date) Portfolio item Planned End Date
field
Epic rank Portfolio Item Rank field

Kanban Systems Portfolio Kanban Board

Metrics

Epic success criteria Portfolio Kanban exit policies



Portfolio Level view in Rally

Program Level
The Program level is the level where we see most customers struggle
and where SAFe provides some of its highest value by clearly
describing how to address typical challenges. This level focuses on
planning and tracking the business value that Agile teams deliver.
The key challenge is in channeling Agile teams’ execution power to
drive desired business outcomes. After all, Agile is just a means to
an end: to deliver more valuable software faster. Because Agile has
historically started at the Team level, we see many organizations get
lost in “a ocean of user stories” managed by Agile teams, with no
visibility into actual business outcome delivered.

Rally Portfolio Manager provides Product Management and Release
Management teams with visibility at the Feature level.

Rally support for the Program level
Portfolio Dashboard Grid showing
Program Backlog
Feature portfolio items

Agile Release Train PSIs Portfolio item Planning Timebox field

Program Roadmap Portfolio Dashboard Grid per PSI



Features Portfolio item with ‘Feature’ Type

Feature cost of delay Portfolio item Vale Score Field

Metrics

Feature burndown Portfolio item burnup
Portfolio item %done fields with
Feature completeness
Red Green Yellow indicator
Portfolio item grid showing
Program performance report
%done fields (by size or by count)
Portfolio Dashboard grid with
PSI progress report
%done and filtered by PSI

Program level view in Rally

Team Level
Rally is a leader in Agile project management, so this paper won’t
attempt to fully cover Rally’s extensive support at the Team level.
Rather, this paper highlights Rally’s key Team level features in support
of SAFe. There are many vendors selling Agile development tools
for uncoordinated teams, (Atlassian Jira + GreenHopper, Collabnet
Scrumworks, Thoughtworks Mingle, and more) however, support for
coordinating teams is a tenet of SAFe.

Rally provides Agile Teams with unique rollup capabilities in support
of the SAFe synchronized team cadence. This synchronization is key
to ensuring that SAFe coordination is in place. That way, Program
and Portfolio levels don’t get lost in the ocean of user stories created



by uncoordinated teams that have adopted software solutions
independently from each other.


Team backlog Iteration backlog page

Iteration tracking Iteration tracking board

Common iteration schedule Matching iterations in all teams

Team Level view in Rally

Conclusion
We hope this paper helped describe how to implement SAFe
with Rally. If you need assistance with your SAFe implementation,
contact us. Rally’s certified SAFe instructors provide implementation
services, Rally Portfolio Manager implementation workshops, and a
host of other services to help you scale your Agile adoption. Contact
us at sales@rallydev.com for more details.


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