Release train engineers, program managers, product owners, and engineering leads
can use Rally’s Release Tracking page to check in
on the delivery of features by team for a specific release.
Having a solid understanding of progress throughout a release
allows you to report accurately to stakeholders,
giving you time to pivot on scope or scheduling if needed.
Overall, consistent release tracking
ensures there are few surprises at the end of a release.
Another benefit of the Release Tracking page
s to surface administration errors that could impact status reporting, such as blocked work,
or release mismatches between the release associated with a feature
and the release associated with
the feature’s user stories.
Use the Release Tracking page after planning meetings have wrapped up,
work has been scheduled, and the release is in progress.
Select Portfolio then Release Tracking to navigate to the Release Tracking page.
Choose a release from the release picker
at the top left of the page.
On the right,
choose the Grid Unit
(Story Points or Story Count)
that you want to track for progress calculations.
Also, choose a view for the right pane of the page:
Chart,
Breakdown, or Dependencies.
For now we’ll choose Breakdown.
Your organization's lowest-level portfolio items for the release
(or features, as we’re calling them here)
are displayed on the left pane of the page,
Use the Search bar to further constrain the list of features
when you’re looking for one in particular.
These features are ranked across teams.
A rank value of D indicates a Derived feature.
This can occur if the feature is associated with a release other than the one selected,
but has stories or defects associated with the release selected.
This can also indicate features assigned to the release,
but not to the scoped project in the project picker.
Select the ID of the feature to go to the detail editor for that feature.
Let’s see why this is a derived feature.
The release for the feature is out of scope,
but stories for the feature are assigned to releases in scope.
To the right of the Name column
you’ll see an issues icon indicating Issues or administrative errors associated
with the feature.
Select the status value to see more details about the percent done
for the feature delivery,
and get details on what’s remaining.
For derived features
you may see a fraction, rather than a percentage done status
since all the details might not be known
about derived features on the Release Tracking page view.
The fraction indicates the number of completed units
for the type of Grid Units specified for the page.
Select the fraction
in the status column for additional details.
Next, let’s clean up our data administration.
Each column in the feature list allows you to sort by clicking the title.
Select the Issues column title
to sort the features accordingly.
Any features with Issues icons will come to the top.
Select each Issues Icon to address
any administrative errors or warnings that apply.
One common mistake is when a story is not assigned to the same release as its feature parent.
Many times the release value for the story simply hasn’t been updated,
or perhaps the story was originally scheduled for a different release.
Select the ID of the user story to go to its detail editor
and address the release mismatch.
If a story has already been accepted,
it won’t appear in the Issues list.
If a story has been blocked you will see it appear in the issues list.
If a user story is dependent on another through a predecessor relationship,
but the predecessor is not scheduled into an earlier iteration,
this issue will also be surfaced here.
Just a quick note,
if there are more than twenty issues with one feature,
Just a quick note, if there are more than twenty issues with one feature, those beyond the limit are not displayed until the older issues are resolved.
Unparented stories and defects represent the group of user stories or defects
that are associated with the selected release
or release iterations,
but don’t have a parent.
These unparented artifacts won’t be included
in the total story points or counts for the features they support.
They are also easily lost or overlooked.
Click the Unparented StorIes and Defects link to begin
to surface the applicable work items
in the iteration breakdown
and then select the items that are highlighted in the iteration breakdown
to reveal one or more work items in question.
Select the ID to use the detail editor to associate them with a parent.
Select the Chart option to view a Burnup Chart for the release.
The Burnup Chart shows how much work has been completed
compared to the total scope of the release.
The Preliminary Estimate line is the sum of the preliminary estimates for all features
that have been scheduled in the release.
This value changes when a feature is added or removed from the release
or when the preliminary estimate for a feature changes.
The Planned Points line shows the sum of the planned estimates
for the stories and defects scheduled in the release.
This line, contrasted with the Preliminary Estimate line
is useful for indicating scope creep or scope reduction with respect to the release.
The dotted lines for Prediction (Planned) and Prediction (Accepted)
show trends derived from the available data.
These lines should intersect sometime
in the latest Iteration or before
to indicate the planned completion date for the work in the release.
If they do not, it means that some portion of the
portfolio items scheduled in the release
will not be complete within the release timebox.
Keep in mind that heading towards a missed release completion date
doesn’t necessarily mean the team overcommitted at the start.
Defects or stories that get added after planning
can often be culprits that set your release off track.
Select the Breakdown option to view all the features in play
for each iteration for each team.
This view also shows work that has been assigned to the release,
but that has not yet been scheduled into an Iteration.
Select a row in the portfolio item list on the left pane
to highlight the Feature in the matrix of teams and iterations on the right pane.
Rows for teams not working on the selected feature
will be collapsed.
Be sure to not click on the ID for the portfolio item in the list
that will open the view for the individual work item.
You can see details of the user stories associated with a feature
by selecting the feature in the right pane.
Select the Feature row in the list again
o return the view to its original state.
The Dependencies option shows a summary of
dependencies among features associated with the release.
This view is helpful in identifying
possible delays of work delivery for the release,
and can be used to determine which features to watch during the release timebox.
All features that have a predecessor or successor dependency
at the Portfolio Item level for the release
will show in the list,
even if a feature in the dependency relationship is not assigned to the selected release.
In the Breakdown view,
features with story-level predecessors display a Predecessor icon.
Selecting the feature in the right pane shows
the predecessor story and story details
Check the status of the predecessor Story to ensure that it’s accepted
before beginning work on its successor.
Notice that the dependency relationship for the feature
is also called out in its issues in the feature list on the left
if a predecessor is scheduled in a way
that it can’t complete in time for the successor,
or if the status is such that it puts the successor at risk.
Congratulations!
You can now use the Release Tracking page to monitor progress for teams and features throughout the release.