Agile Development Blog

My iPhone tells me it’s 46 degrees on this crisp, sunny November day in Boulder. I’m happy to say that my phone also reminded me about daylight savings this morning – I get an extra hour back today! So, I decided to take some time to share my thoughts about Rally’s marketing team winning the Eloqua Markie Award for our efforts in providing customers and prospects valuable information, exactly when they need it.

Our team spent the past year focused on aligning sales and marketing to create automated and relevant communications to our prospects and customers. We designed a series of communication “tracks” that provide accessible, valuable educational information, delivered in small pieces to individuals and organizations – just when they need it most. We share everything from how-to blog posts and whitepapers, to video chalk talks with our expert coaching staff and training tutorials on how to use Rally with the most impact.

With the Markie Award, Eloqua recognizes excellence in marketing each year at its annual Eloqua Experience event. The award celebrates creative campaigning, flawless execution, inspirational thought leadership, innovative tactics and outstanding results. I’m proud to say that, from a competitive field of nearly 200 submissions across 20 categories, Rally took home the Markie for our prospect education campaign!

Part of Rally's Marketing Team Celebrating the Markie Award Win in San Francisco!

In fact, moments after we won, there was a 4.2 earthquake in San Francisco! I’m not the only one who felt the earth move when Eloqua’s CEO Joe Payne announced Rally as the winner of the Best Lead Nurturing Program:

@ymanderson tweeted “Earth shaking news…literally (just felt an earthquake in SF) @rallysoftware just won best nurture program…#EE11SF Congrats @lisamchen”

It was a joy and an honor — I’m already excited for next year’s Eloqua Experience and finding new, creative ways to delight our prospects and customers with just the right information they need about Agile and Rally.

We are pleased to announce $20 million in funding led by Meritech Capital Partners. Meritech is a leading provider of late-stage venture capital to category-defining private technology companies and has previously backed market leaders including Facebook, NetSuite and Salesforce.com.

Read more about the news from:

• Our press release
• TechCrunch
• Boulder County Business Report
• Denver Business Journal

Tim gave us this perspective:

“Every business is a software business. We’re now seeing adoption of Agile practices spread across organizations and industries faster than ever. We’re excited to have additional funding to meet this exploding demand for Agile ALM platforms.”

We also welcome Rob Ward as a board observer. Rob was a founder of Meritech in 1999 and focuses on investment opportunities in the data and analytics, internet and digital media, SaaS/open source software and security sectors.

As Ryan said earlier today, “And the snowball keeps rolling downhill!”

Bring Your Kid to Work Day teaches kids about the work-a-day world of their parents — helping them explore the many life choices they have and getting them dreaming about their own grown-up careers. More than 35 million children and adults participate at over 3 million workplaces each year. Rally recently celebrated the 19-year-old program by hosting nearly 20 kids in our Boulder, Colorado, and Raleigh, North Carolina offices. Rally’s action-packed Bring Your Kid to Work Day included an office tour, a scavenger hunt, a Twitter session, a pizza party, an “Invent the Future” visioning exercise and a collaborative design challenge (complete with marshmallows!). Here’s what a few Rallyers and their kids had to say about Rally’s 2011 Bring Your Kid to Work Day:

Christine Bottagaro, Senior Director, Integrated Marketing

Having recently joined Rally, I was excited to have my son join us for Bring Your Kid to Work Day.  Rally is a place like none other – full of funny, smart people and a very open and dynamic environment.  After hearing me tell stories, he imagined a day of scooter riding and Izzy drinking.  The team here pulled together a much richer event with Twitter and programming demos, lunch, a tour of the building and even a coach-led team exercise involving marshmallows.  Frankly, I was a little jealous!  It was fun to see the scooter gang roam from one department to the next.  Anthony had a great day, although getting him to school the next day was a challenge.

from Anthony Bottagaro, 9-years-old, 4th grade

I had fun at Rally during Bring Your Kid to Work Day. We rode scooters, and learned about a lot of different areas and had pizza for lunch. We wrote a program with the engineers made us guess a number between one and ten, and it also created a “Hello World” program.  Also, my group won the marshmallow contest, where you have twenty sticks of raw spaghetti and one marshmallow, a yard of tape and a yard of string.  You try to put the marshmallow as high as you can on the structure that you make. It has to stand on its own and you can’t hang it from anything or use tape to stabilize the structure. This showed us how a group of people can bring their ideas together to make something work.  We met some funny people who made us laugh and we went all over the building as an adventure.  I think work at Rally is always as fun as it seemed when I was there.

Steve Konieczka, On-Premise Product Line Manager

My daughters always love Bring Your Kid to Work Day.  They drew straws and my older daughter won.  It happened that I was in an all-day Kanban training class, which actually worked perfectly.  She had an awesome time learning about Kanban through the fun activities facilitated by Todd Sheridan, and the other attendees went out of their way to help her feel welcome and part of the class.  While it doesn’t seem like much, this is exactly the kinds of things that make a big difference in the lives of our kids!

from Tyler Jane Konieczka, 16-years-old, High School Junior

“We have a stand-up meeting at 8:30, and then we have a few minutes before our KANBAN class starts, so I’ll show you the office around then…” As my Dad explained the day to me I anticipated the day ahead. The day was a complete eye-opener for me. We started out our stand-up meeting by meeting Dad’s SCRUM team and all of his neighboring teams. During the KANBAN meeting I got to play a game with everyone and plan a KANBAN board. Not only did I learn loads about software development I also learned about KANBAN and how I could possibly use it in my activities and everyday life, such as 4-H and my own personal tasks. I’d say my day with Dad was more educational then the average day of my High-Schooler-life. Not only that – I got to play with all of Dad’s toys and games, I think he has way too much fun at work . Rally is a BLAST!

Rally’s CEO Tim Miller is one of the introverted leaders The Wall Street Journal interviews in today’s article “Introverted Execs Find Ways to Shine.”  WSJ Online Career Columnist Joann Lublin discusses how introverted executives are stepping into the limelight – even though many dislike being the center of attention. The article suggests that introverts excel at one-on-one interactions, empathy, deliberate decision making and listening. Tim discusses his introverted nature in the following excerpts:

“Consider Tim Miller, chief executive of Rally Software Development Corp. He unsuccessfully pitched an investor group about pouring $10 million into the young software concern three years ago. “All steak, no sizzle,” Mr. Miller recalls the lead investor telling him following his flawed presentation. “I didn’t create the excitement that they were used to seeing from an extroverted, more flamboyant CEO,” he says.

At Mr. Miller’s request, the investor group agreed to hear a revised pitch a week later. He brought along Rally’s extroverted founder as well as the company’s highest sales official. He wanted his audience “to see that the whole team wasn’t introverts.” After the second meeting, Rally got the $10 million.”

Some introverted executives thrive at work as long as they regularly recharge their drained emotional batteries through solitary pursuits, such as a long jog. For Rally’s Mr. Miller, the remedy is golf. “I actually play alone more than I care to admit,” he says.”

The topic of introverted leaders has been getting a lot of attention lately. Harvard Business Review recently published an article entitled “The Hidden Advantages of Quiet Bosses.” Adam M. Grant, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Francesca Gino, associate professor at Harvard Business School, and David A. Hofmann, professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, have research that suggests introverts may make better bosses in certain situations. The article says:

“In a dynamic, unpredictable environment, introverts are often more effective leaders—particularly when workers are proactive, offering ideas for improving the business. Such behavior can make extroverted leaders feel threatened. In contrast, introverted leaders tend to listen more carefully and show greater receptivity to suggestions, making them more effective leaders of vocal teams.”

Tim was also interviewed for author Susan Cain’s forthcoming book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” A self-proclaimed introvert and creator of the popular blog ThePowerOfIntroverts.com, Cain discusses the specific physiological and psychological advantages to being an introvert and what we we can all learn from the introverts among us, including how to be more creative, think more carefully, love more gently, and organize our schools and workplaces more productively.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Susan about her experience interviewing Tim, and here’s what she had to say: “The thing that really struck me about Tim is his ability to inspire and solicit ideas from others. He’s not at all interested in taking credit. Instead, he focuses on the smart people around him and integrating their ideas with his own to find the best solution.”

Here, Tim talks about introspection, the strengths of being an introvert, taking a stand, servant leadership, and being a great leader in this world.

Rally was ranked #35 on The Wall Street Journal’s list of the top 50 venture-backed companies that have “the greatest promise to succeed.” The Wall Street Journal’s list is the result of analyzing 5,743 companies valued below $1 billion that have received an equity round of financing in the past three years. The ranking weighed how much money the companies raised, what venture capital firms invested in them, who sits on the company boards and previous successes of company executives. Rally has raised $49M in various rounds from Boulder Ventures, Greylock Partners, Mobius Venture Capital Inc., Mohr Davidow Ventures and Vista Ventures.

We recently caught up with Brad Feld, Managing Director at Foundry Group and one of Rally’s board members. Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital.

Here’s what Brad had to say about Rally ranking #35 on The Wall Street Journal’s list of the top 50 venture-backed companies:

At Rally, we love to celebrate when we’ve had great success. Every quarter, if we exceed our expectations, we do something for the whole company. Last month, we treated everyone to a day on the slopes to celebrate one of our best performing quarters ever. We met first thing in the morning at our office, grabbed a quick breakfast, boarded our chartered buses, and headed up the beautiful Boulder Canyon to Eldora Ski Resort. We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful, sunny day for downhill skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. And, I know I share this sentiment with many Rallyers when I say, I love Colorado!

It’s an important part of Rally’s culture to celebrate our success and really have fun together. At the end of the day, we face challenges as a company just like everybody else, so it’s important to get out and spend time with the people that we work so hard with. A few Rallyers share their experience of Ski Day below, along with a video that was shot on the patio of Eldora’s Corona Bowl Bar during our Apres Ski Happy Hour. Good times.

We moved into our new headquarters at 3333 Walnut Street in Boulder about two months ago, and it seems like everyone is settling in nicely.  With a gorgeous view of the Flatirons to the southwest, we  transformed the building into a collaborative workplace that encourages interaction and creativity. Our move marks another milestone in Rally’s growth, which in the last year, includes expanding our remote offices in Raleigh and London, nearly doubling our user seat count, and continuing to hire aggressively.

Thanks in part to a rebate by the City of Boulder, Rally was able to stay in the innovative Boulder tech community where the company was founded. The rebate program has social, community and environmental sustainability guidelines that require companies to meet minimum requirements in order to qualify. Rally exceeded the sustainability guidelines, making several innovative and environmentally-friendly decisions to ensure that our new building is energy efficient, less demanding of resources and recycling-friendly.

Everyone seems to love our new space. I’ve heard Rallyers say they love the view, the sunny offices, and the artwork (special thanks to Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor). One Rallyer said the thing she loves most is the choice of either freshly brewed light or dark roast coffee in Rally’s main kitchen.  But don’t take my word for it – we polled a few Rallyers last Friday afternoon and here’s what they had to say:

Rally’s active hiring pace will remain steady throughout 2011. We currently have over 15 positions open in Engineering, IT, Professional Services, Sales, Support, Marketing and Administration. Last year, Rally was named the #6 best place to work in the U.S. by Outside Magazine, and the #1 best place to work in Colorado. To view and apply for open positions, visit Rally’s Career Page.

Rally truly has a unique culture. I hear it all the time from Rallyers who have worked for a wildly diverse range of companies – from Amazon.com and Apple to Travelocity and Borland.  Yes, Rally is made up of amazing people – some of the most talented, smart, kind, passionate people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. And, time and time again, employees say that the number one reason they love Rally is also, you guessed it — the people.  I hear them say that they want to come to work every day. I hear them say that they love engaging and collaborating with one another, because together, they ultimately come up with the best solutions. This echos something I learned very early on: I learned that, where individuals will always fall short, teams can conquer just about anything.

I’m passionate about maintaining Rally’s collaborative culture because I believe that empowered teams of people who want to come to work are essential for solving today’s big, complex problems. We’re launching this Company Blog channel to open the doors of Rally – a tech company that has some of the best and brightest minds working every day to solve complex problems with a growing business that helps customers eliminate waste from the process of developing software. By sharing our thoughts and ideas, my hope is that this blog creates lively conversation around topics like collaboration, work-life balance, community, volunteering, core-values, culture, and building teams of the right people.

We want to hear what’s on your mind. Do you have a cool story about how your company supports its local community? Something about your company’s culture that’s a must-have for you?  How does your team and your company celebrate success? From our employees, customers, partners and investors to everyone in the lively Boulder community in which we live and work, we’d like to invite you to join the conversation.

Tim Miller is avid sailor, golfer, tennis player, and is the CEO at Rally Software Development.