Pramatr Blog

Rallydev is Rally software’s agile life-cycle management suite. For the last few months we’ve had the pleasure of using the community edition. So it was high time we told you what we thought. Before I start you should know that Pramatr is in no way associated with Rally software.

Are We Agile?
Pramatr’s use of tools and techniques is quite simple; if something works we use it and if it doesn’t we don’t. We strive to make things easier for us to develop and deliver and anything that makes this process simpler and quicker is ok by us. We use continuous integration, unit testing, small chunks of achievable work etc… all of which are techniques found within agile methods.

So are we agile? No not really, we don’t tick all the various boxes to make sure we’re following an imaginary agile line, in fact I dare say there are agile techniques we certainly don’t do. As a small team, requirements change and items are sometimes not finalised until an iteration of work actually starts. At times new and pressing requirements find their way in to an iteration mid-way through. So to manage our project we needed something that could manage all of this but also give us some lose structure that we could work with.

No Install!
Rallydev is deployed as SaaS so right off the bat there’s no install. With this simple deployment approach you can eliminate any setup and maintenance costs and just use the software to do exactly want you want. A quick registration on the website is required and then you’re away.

Nice Visuals
The Rallydev UI is an absolute pleasure to work with, incorporating great use of space and colour. The elegant way in which you can try new features and give feedback is simply brilliant. The plethora of reports provided gives great visibility into the project. With its ‘double-click’ in-line task editing and modifiable dashboard, items you need to access often are accessible with a single click. This is a great time saver and just works!

Active Community
Rally’s community forums seem to be bustling with life backed full of questions, hints and tips and great new ideas. There’s even a nice opportunity to vote for new features, which is really a great idea for both customers and company alike. Listening to what your customers want might seem like common sense, but how many companies allow customers to properly engage in this way?

And the Oscar Goes too…
The absolute killer feature for us is Rallydev’s Eclipse integration, a mylyn based plug-in that fits into the IDE effortlessly. Eclipse integration has become a must have feature over recent years but many products are still left lacking, but not Rallydev.

Free! You got to love it right?
Rally have really captured a market share here by giving smaller businesses the opportunity to use their product for free. They’ve recognise there’s more micro-sized businesses than large behemoth enterprises but what’s even more exciting is the feature list you get with CE – it should keep even the most ardent of agile supporters happy:

• Manage requirements through user stories
• Manage releases
• Monitor and manage iterations
• Monitor and assign resources
• Task-board views
• Numerous task and defect reports
• Manage defects and defect suites
• Record test cases against stories

Summary
With Rallydev you get a great product with features bursting from the seams. It’s easy and accessible and will allow you to very quickly integrate your business and requirements. In no time at all you can have your team trained, registered and working for your new management tool (especially with the Eclipse integration!). Smaller businesses can try it without restriction which should really help spread the word for this great product and convert many CE users to paying Enterprise customers. Try Rallydev out today and more importantly let them know what you think!