Creating a User Story

You can create a user story in Rally from several locations. This flexibility allows you to progress through work activities and create a user story whenever you need it from logical positions within the Rally application.

Your ability to create user stories is dependent upon the User Role and Permissions you have been assigned for the workspace. When you create a user story from the inline add option, the user story is ranked in the page at the position you specify in the Rank field if Drag & Drop ranking is configured.

Concurrency conflicts may occur if multiple users edit the same user story. The first user to make their changes and click the Save & Close, Save & New, or Save buttons will have their changes committed. When subsequent users make their changes to the same user story then attempts to save, they are presented with an option to Review my changes or Overwrite with my version.

If you select Review my changes, you are returned to the user story editor so the changes can be copied and not lost. If you select Overwrite with my version, your changes are saved and the other users changes are overwritten. Overwrite with my version where attachments are added and edited will save both users' changes as well as apply deletions.

You can create a child user story in Rally from several locations. This flexibility allows you to progress through work activities and create a user story whenever you need it from logical positions within the Rally application.

Your ability to create a child user story is dependent upon the User Role and Permissions you have been assigned for the workspace.

Viewing the User Story Summary page

The Summary page is an inventory of all user stories created in the current project (or scope of projects). This view provides a summary listing of all user stories represented in Rally and is the gateway to viewing individual user story details and their associations. Rally offers two styles of user story displays from this page:

• Click the hierarchical icon to show all user stories in a hierarchical display. The highest level parent user story displays with all related children listed below the appropriate parent user story. This display can be collapsed to show only parent user stories or expanded to view the related child user stories for each parent user story.
• Click the flat icon to view a simple flat file listing of all user stories regardless of hierarchical position.

The User Stories Summary View allows you to:

• Perform the common actions of all Work Item Summary Views
• Easily assemble your user stories into a meaningful display by using Rally predefined Quick Views or by creating your own Custom Views. Click the drop-down arrow on the selection box in the upper-left corner to display the saved user stories Quick Views selections. Highlight your selection and your display refreshes to reflect your chosen view. Refine these views further by using the filter and sort capabilities.
• Expand this view to see the hierarchy of root, or parent, user story and all related descending children for the parent user story.
• Rank parent and child user stories on the page.
• View predecessor and successor relationships by flying your mouse over the related inline icon.
• View and track your estimates. The label icon on each column header contains the first letter of your defined unit of measure configured for the workspace under the Units tab. Hover your mouse over this icon to read the full label of your unit measurement.
  • Plan Est: The automatic calculation or roll up of plan estimates for all for user stories in the display. Each user story in the view displays the individual plan estimate under this column header.
  • Task Est: The automatic calculation or roll up of task estimates for all tasks per user story.
  • To Do: The automatic calculation or roll up of to do estimates for all tasks per user story.
• Inline Edit a user story by double-clicking within the highlighted row.

Rally -supplied Quick Views can not be edited or deleted. As a result, if a Quick View is selected for display, the Edit Custom View icon and the Delete Custom View icon are not available for selection.

A filter of the User Story Summary view in the tree view returns all matches of parent and child user stories while retaining the hierarchical display. If the parent is not a match, it still appears, but is grayed out to indicate it is not an exact match of your filter criteria.

If Drag & Drop ranking is configured, you may rank user stories on the page by dragging the user story up or down in priority relative to other user stories on the page. Click the user story and drag it up or down in priority on the page. Page ranking on the user story page does not affect the ranking of user stories on other pages.

All child user stories within the current project appear in the User Story Summary view, even if they have a parent user story outside the current project.

Custom Views are not shared among Rally users.

Viewing the User Story Detail page

The User Story Detail page provides a view of an individual user story. The User Story Detail page is the same for both a parent and a child user story. From the User Story Detail page, you can:

• View a read-only display of a single user story in its entirety including all current field values and details.
• Perform multiple activities on the displayed user story.
• Navigate to other work items associated to the displayed user story.

The Sidebar located on the left of the page displays any associated artifacts related to the current story. Click any link to navigate to a summary view of the related artifacts of the indicated type. This Summary view offers all actions of the typical Work Item Summary view.

From the Sidebar, click the link to display the Story Burndown page. Use the show and hide icons to control the Sidebar display.

Click the URL icon in the upper-left corner of the Detail page to open a new Detail User Story page with the complete URL to this work item. From here you can copy the URL to use as a reference link in email to team members, or attachments to other work items, and so on.

Use the Actions button located in the upper-right of the User Story Detail page to select action options such as Edit, New, Copy, Print, Delete, and other specific actions directly from the User Story Detail. As you navigate through the associations, the Actions button menu options vary in relation to the artifact you are viewing. The top section of the menu options apply to the root artifact (in this case the user story), while the lower half of the options apply to the associated work item.

Your display will vary based upon the User Role and Permissions you have been assigned for the workspace.

If you expect to see a field that is not on this screen, it may have been Hidden by the administrator.

A child user story displays a hyperlinked value in the Parent field allowing you to easily navigate the user story hierarchy.

If Drag and Drop ranking is configured for your workspace, the Rank field is not displayed in the user story details.

These field values can be set when creating or editing a user story.

Field Description General ID A system-generated ID is assigned to your user story. It is unique and will never change. The ID consists of a tag prefix and a numerical value. The tag can be customized by your system administrator to reflect a differentiating prefix for each work item defined in your project. Name The user story name allows you to easily reference a user story. The red highlight indicates it is a required entry field. Tags Tagging provides all team members the ability to logically group and filter user stories, defects, defect suites, test cases, and tasks. Description A Rich Text Format field for the description of your user story. Capture a brief description of your user story here. Enter any text in the description that will help all team members clearly understand the intent of the user story. You can copy and paste images in this field. Attachments Browse for a file to attach to your work item details. Attachments Description Provide additional text information (up to 256 bytes) to describe your attachment. Owner Specify the owner of the user story. Package Logically group related user stories into a common container. Project This field is automatically populated with the name of the project that contains the user story once the user story is scheduled into a release or iteration. Note: User stories are shared across the workspace until they are scheduled. User Story Parent Click the icon to select a parent user story. This field allows you to decompose user stories into parent/child hierarchies, or re-parent existing child user stories. Schedule Schedule State Indicates the progress that has been made toward the completion of the user story. There are six states that can be set from the drop-down list. The first and last states can be customized by your subscription administrator to help you better manage your process. The following identifies the default states that the user story can move through: Defined: The user story is elaborated enough that the development team can write tasks and provide estimates. This is the defaulted state value for a new user story and cannot be customized. When the state for all children user stories are set to defined, the parent user story is automatically rolled up to reflect the Defined state regardless of its initial setting. In Progress: The user story has been committed to an iteration and work has begun on the user story. When the state for any child user story or task is set to defined, the parent user story is automatically rolled up to reflect the Defined state regardless of its initial setting. This state can not be customized. Completed: All related tasks/user stories have been completed. When the state for all of the tasks/child user stories are set to Completed, the parent user story is automatically rolled up to reflect the Completed state regardless of its initial setting. This state can not be customized. Accepted: All acceptance criteria for the user story has been met. When the state for all of the child user stories are set to Accepted, the parent user story is automatically rolled up to reflect the Accepted state regardless of its initial setting. This state can not be customized. Blocked Indicates that work on any or all of the related tasks or children for the user story can not continue until all issues preventing further progress are removed. If any related task or child user story has been marked blocked, this field will automatically be checked in the editor. You can also manually block the user story by editing it and activating the checkbox. The blocked state will appear in the Iteration Status or Release Status view in red to indicate blocked, but will still carry the associated state letter so the initial state of the user story is not lost. Release/Iteration These fields indicate the release or iteration to which the user story is assigned. Select a release or iteration by clicking the downward arrow to the right of the respective field. A drop-down list of all available releases or iterations contained in the project displays. Plan Estimate Use this field to record how much effort is estimated to complete the user story. This field is a real number and can accept three digits followed by a decimal and two more digits. The units are defined by your administrator. This field is rolled up (accumulated) from child user stories and displayed as a total in the highest-level parent user story. Task Estimate, Actual, and To Do Read-only fields. The values contained in these fields are rolled up from all associated tasks and displayed in the user story. Rank Indicate the relative importance of your user stories when manual ranking is in configured for your workspace. If Drag & Drop ranking is configured for your workspace, the Rank field is not displayed in the user story details. Predecessors State Indicates the rolled up state of all predecessors for this user story. If multiple predecessors are associated to the user story, the lowest State value of any predecessor is rolled up and displayed in this field. Blocked Indicates if any predecessors of this user story are blocked. Custom Custom Fields This section displays any custom fields that have been added to your workspace and their related values. If no custom fields have been added, this section does not display. Notes Notes Record additional information to implement this story such as team decisions, customer input, or discussion results. Revision Change Description Record any changes made to your story during an edit. Comments are stored and displayed in the Revision History page. Note: Changes made to the story are also systematically captured for Revision History.