Glossary

A

acceptance

An activity whereby the product owner and/or customer accepts the validity of a feature, based on its adherence to the defined acceptance criteria.

acceptance criteria

The criteria which defines the functionality, behavior, and performance required by the feature for it to be accepted by the product owner and/or customer.

acceptance test driven development

A method of test-driven development (TDD) that involves writing an executable test before the solution code. These tests are typically developed in conjunction with the product owner and/or customer and are conducted to determine whether or not a feature satisfies its acceptance criteria.

acceptance testing

Formal tests developed by the customer, product manager or their testing proxy, and conducted to determine whether or not a system satisfies its acceptance criteria.

active release

The active release is defined as the release that has a state value of Active and whose release date is the earliest date.

actor

Someone or something that interacts with the system.

agile manifesto

The origin of agile development methodologies. Crafted in 2001 by several software developers, the manifesto stresses the importance of individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and responding to change over following a plan.

agile team

The collaborative team comprised of the product owner, the scrum master, and the delivery team.

app

An app allows for the combination of data from more than one source into a single integrated page within Rally. Rally allows you to use your own custom app code, and provides a catalog of managed apps.

artifact

Synonymous with work item; an object in Rally that is used to represent story, defect, or testing work.

associations

Associations are relationships that assist in managing software development work items. For example, a technical problem found while developing new code can be documented as a defect associated to a user story.

attribute

An attribute represents a named property of a work item. An attribute has a type that defines the entry of its instances, such as drop-down lists, text fields, and boolean. Synonymous with field.

attribute value

Information assigned to an attribute. For example, the State attribute could be assigned a value of Committed, Completed, Approved, etc.

authentication

The process of verifying a person's identity. Your username and password are authenticated when logging in.

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B

backlog

A backlog is a collection of prioritized requests for work to be done. Agile teams use release backlogs and product backlogs. The Backlog page can be found underneath the Plan tab when navigating in Rally.

backlog grooming

An ongoing process whereby the product owner and/or customer manages the product backlog based on information gathered in the feedback cycles inherent to agile practices. The activities of backlog grooming can include: adjusting rank; breaking down stories that are going to be worked on in the next few iterations; creating new stories; updating existing stories; deleting obsolete stories; elaborating acceptance criteria.

bug bash

The practice of testing new software features manually, to uncover defects that automated testing may not find. Rally development, quality, and support teams hold collaborative bug bashes prior to each release.

build number

An operational version of a system or part of a system that identifies a subset of the capabilities to be provided in the final product.

burndown

A type of chart that shows work remaining over time. "Burndown" is a compound word, the correct spelling and industry standard. "Burn down" refers to arson.

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C

capacity

An estimate of how much work a team can complete in a given time period.

card

A card is an object on a board, such as the Kanban Board app. Cards can represent work items such as user stories, tasks, and defects.

change description

Textual information that specifies the justification or reasoning behind the changes associated with a given revision of a work item.

chicken

A term to describe a member of a scrum team or daily standup meeting that does not have an active stake in the work. Taken from the fable of the chicken and pig, a chicken is only involved, but a pig is committed. See skin-in-the-game.

child story

A user story that represents the breakdown of a large feature or initiative into a smaller segment. Only the lowest-level child story in a user story hierarchy can be scheduled into an iteration or release.

code review

A systematic examination of computer source code intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills.

continuous flow

A type of software methodology that allows new code to be released as soon as it is finished, instead of holding to a defined release schedule. See also Lean.

continuous integration

A software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently; usually each developer integrates their code into the code base at least daily.

cross-functional

A team composed of people with varied levels of skills and experience brought together to achieve a shared goal. Agile teams should be cross-functional.

current iteration

The current iteration is that iteration that contains today's date, the earliest start date, and the earliest end date.

custom app

A page created from HTML or JavaScript that you provide. Your subscription administrator may enable this feature.

custom field

A user-defined work item field. Custom fields may be created on most Rally work items.

custom page

A user-generated page that displays in Rally. Custom pages may contain a Rally catalog app, a custom app built by a user, a dashboard page, or the contents of another webpage. Custom pages may be installed by a single user or shared with all users of a workspace.

customer

A person or organization, internal or external to the producing organization, who takes financial responsibility for the system. In a large system this may not be the end user. The customer is the ultimate recipient of the developed product and its artifacts. See also stakeholder.

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D

dashboard

A Rally page found underneath the My Home tab. Panels on the dashboard display various information and charts. Users can control what panels display and how they appear. Multiple dashboards can be created as custom pages.

defect

A defect (also called software bug or just "bug") is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect result).

defect suite

A grouping mechanism that allows you to compile and schedule a collection of defects as a single unit for resolution in an assigned iteration or release.

definition of done

A living definition created and managed by the delivery team, defining their current standards for technical excellence. The definition typically includes the requirements the team has to meet in order to declare any work item worked on in an iteration "done." These differ from acceptance criteria in that they are typically technical in nature and generalized to be valid for most work items (e.g. unit tests complete, online help updated) as opposed to value driven criteria specific to a feature (e.g. website users should only be able to create one account per email address).

dependency

A relationship between two modeling element work items, in which a change to one work item will affect the other work item.

drag and drop

A method for ranking work items whereby you click the work item and drag it to a desired prioritized position on the page.

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E

epic story

Synonymous with parent story.

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F

feature

An intended behavior or property of a computer program, usually documented in a design.

feature request

A description of a feature or function that does not currently exist in the software, requested by a customer or other stakeholder. Feature requests may be captured using Rally Idea Manager, and converted into user stories when ready for prioritization and development.

field

Fields represent a named property of a work item. A field has a type that defines the entry of its instances, such as drop-down lists, text fields, and boolean. Synonymous with attribute.

filtering

A process by which you can change the amount of information displayed in a view. You can filter by specifying certain distinct criteria for any or all attributes. For example, instead of displaying all work items, you might apply a filter to display only work items having a high priority.

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G

guideline

A description of how to work with a particular work item, including how to create and revise the work item. Guidance (guidelines) may include techniques, procedures, standards, tips, templates of work items, examples of work items, definitions, and so on.

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H

hackathon

An event in a scrum team where individual members are allowed to create their own code, features, or other materials of their choosing. Hackathon work should be fun, but also relate to the system in some way. A hackathon generally lasts an entire iteration, and is built into a release schedule.

hierarchy

A collection of related user stories, used to represent a large feature or initiative. Top-level or parent stories represent the whole feature, while smaller child stories represent the chunks of work necessary to deliver the feature. A hierarchy may contain several levels of child stories. For Rally Portfolio Manager, the portfolio item hierarchy models your portfolio, with each level representing a different type of strategic goal. The upper types of the hierarchy represent goals or themes to bring to market over a longer period of time. The lower types of the hierarchy represent more discrete items of market value, or user stories.

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I

idea

An object in Rally Idea Manager used to represent a feature or function requested by a customer or stakeholder.

ideal day

An estimation unit that considers the time it would take to complete a task without interruptions.

increment

The changing condition of the software product as it is developed, and is expressed in terms of repeated iterations or milestones with specific start and end points.

incremental development

A type of iterative development strategy in which more and more functionality is added to an iteration of the system being built.

infinite loop

See loop, infinite.

investment category

A budget or investment area that a portfolio item supports. Define a list of investment categories possible for a portfolio item. Each portfolio item can be associated with one investment category.

iteration

A theme-driven timebox of requests to be worked on and accepted within a release of a product; it is defined in an iteration planning meeting and is completed with an iteration demo and review meeting. The terms iteration and sprint are used synonymously.

iteration plan

A plan to achieve a specified level of functionality and meet additional specific criteria with a particular iteration of a system.

iteration units

The estimated amount of resources for an iteration.

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J

javascript

A software development language that can interact with HTML to deliver various web based content. Custom Rally applications may be written in javascript.

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K

kanban

A system of tracking work across various stages of development. Work is represented by cards, and stages are represented by columns on a board. A card is moved to the next column when it enters the next stage.

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L

leaf node

Refers to any user story that has no children.

Lean

Software development practices adapted from the Lean Manufacturing principles developed by Toyota. The focus of Lean methodology is to eliminate waste, amplify learning, decide as late as possible, deliver as fast as possible, build integrity, empower the team, and see the whole. You may practice Lean in Rally by using the Kanban Board app.

loop, infinite

See infinite loop.

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M

managed app

A catalog of managed apps is available to Rally users. These managed apps can be easily installed as custom pages within Rally. These apps combine the information you have stored in Rally with HTML, JavaScript, and an API to render and manipulate data to suit your specific needs.

MoSCoW

An acronym used to prioritize work, and/or aspects of a particular feature. Stands for must have, should have, can have, and won't have. May be used to define the acceptance criteria of a user story.

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O

owner

The user responsible for accepting a work item.

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P

package

A general purpose mechanism for collecting and organizing work products into groups. Package is an available field in Rally, but it is recommended that tags be used instead.

page order

A rank order based upon the page position of a work item on a particular summary view.

panel

A component of a dashboard page. Each panel may display various Rally data or charts.

parent story

A user story that represents a large feature or set of work, which is further defined by related child stories. Parent stories cannot be scheduled into an iteration or release, as they are considered too large. Synonymous with epic story.

PEBCAK

Acronym used by IT professionals to describe a common source of errors. It stands for Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.

permissions

Specific user rights for workspaces and projects. Controls abilities to administer, create, edit, and delete Rally subscription data and settings.

pig

A term to describe a member of a scrum team or daily standup meeting that does have an active stake in the work. Taken from the fable of the chicken and pig, a pig is committed, but a chicken is only involved. See skin-in-the-game

plan estimate

The amount of effort estimated to complete a single user story. Plan estimates are represented by points, t-shirt sizes, or other systems. They do not correspond to task or man hours.

plan level estimating

An estimating technique that uses an agreed upon unit (typically story points or ideal days) to estimate the relative size of a feature. This estimating is typically done to assist with release planning and to allow the team to determine its velocity.

planning poker

An approach to estimating the size of work among a scrum team. Team members are given cards, each with a point value. An example of point values is 0, 2, 5, 10, 20, 40, 100. The potential new work is presented to the team, and each member holds up a card with their estimated point value. The largest and smallest point value holders explain their position, and then the process is repeated until a consensus is reached.

points

The most common units used by agile teams to estimate relative size of stories.

portfolio item

A Rally work item type used to capture high-level features, initiatives, and themes. A top-level portfolio item may consist of several smaller portfolio items, each of which consist of several user stories. Available with the Rally Portfolio Manager product.

predecessor

Any user story that must be completed before another user story can start or finish.

preliminary estimate

An estimating technique that uses an agreed upon unit (for example, S, M, L; or MoSCoW - must have, should have, could have, won't have) to estimate the relative size of a feature. This estimating is typically done to provide the product owner with a high-level cost estimate for product backlog items for an initial ranking activity. You may use any type of numeric value, although Rally coaches advise using relative point sizes.

product backlog

A prioritized list of functional and non-functional requirements for a system or product. A product backlog may be created and prioritized on the Backlog page, underneath the Plan tab in Rally.

product backlog item

Can be user stories, technical features, defects or any other item that will require the time of the delivery team to deliver the feature. PBIs are typically estimated at the gross and/or plan level.

product owner

A role on an agile delivery team that is responsible for collecting and ranking business requirements on the product backlog. A product owner does not manage a delivery team, but communicates what must be built in the next release or iteration. In exchange for the team's commitment to finish the top-most ranked work in an iteration, the product owner agrees to protect the team from any changes in requirements during the iteration.

program

An organization construct that allows paired projects and releases to be grouped into a single unit for tracking and reporting purposes. A program can be tracked as a parent project in Rally.

project

Contains a schedule consisting of a set of releases and iterations, and their related stories and tasks. In Rally, it is helpful to think of projects as work areas for teams.

project picker

A pull-down menu found in the upper-left corner of any Rally page. Used to select what project and related child or parent projects data is pulled from for display on the page. See also scope.

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R

rank

An attribute of a work product that describes its importance for a release or iteration.

refactoring

Any change to software code that improves its readability or simplifies its structure without changing its results.

release

A milestone representing the internal or external delivery of a working, tested version of the system or software. A release consists of multiple iterations to deliver new system code.

Release Announcement

A Release Announcement specifies the list of cases whose respective Salesforce contact will be alerted over email when the release announcement notification is sent.

release backlog

Contains all stories that have been scheduled for a particular release, but not a particular iteration.

release units

The estimated amount of resources for a release.

report

A generated description of one or several work items, and/or work item attributes. The report can describe the detail of an individual work product, or a summary listing of like work products.

requirement

A software capability that must be met or possessed by the system or a system component to satisfy a contract, standard, specification, or other formally imposed documentation, that takes the form of a declaration. User stories and portfolio items are types of requirements.

resources

The total number of estimated hours, days, weeks or units of measure available for a release or iteration.

result

A term used in describing the outcome of a test case.

revision

A change made to a work item, user, or workspace settings. Revision histories are provided on these objects to show a log of changes.

revision number

The number identifying a revision. Revision numbers are automatically incremented for each change made to a work item.

risk

The level of impact of the successful outcome of a work item.

risk score

A number that indicates the chances you will take in bringing the portfolio item to market.

roadmap

A high-level or long-range estimation of work to be completed by a scrum team or organization. Roadmaps may be created on a quarterly or yearly basis. In agile organizations, roadmaps are subject to change with evolving business priorities or needs.

RSS

RSS (Really Simply Syndication) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing web content.

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S

scheduling

A time-ordered collection of activities that specify when important project events or milestones are planned to occur.

scope

The primary project that you have designated as your focus within the current workspace, as well as related parent and child projects that you have included in focus. See project picker.

Setup Object

The setup object is used to configure your connection to Rally, and to specify mapping preferences between Salesforce cases and Rally defects/stories. It is also where the Salesforce administrator can update all cases with their respective Rally development status at once.

sidebar

A pane on the left side of Rally detail pages that organizes related artifact links and makes them easy to access.

skin-in-the-game

A term that represents an individual's commitment to a team or project. For example, if a pig and a chicken decide to open a ham-and-eggs restaurant, the chicken is merely involved while the pig is committed; it has skin-in-the-game.

sprint

Synonymous with iteration.

stakeholder

An individual who is materially affected by the outcome of work done in an iteration, release, or user story.

state

A condition during the life of a work item where it satisfies given criteria. Examples include defined, in-progress, completed, open, closed, released, etc.

subscription

An agreement to give a set of named users access to use the Rally service.

subscription administrator

Has administrator privileges for the subscription and as such can add and set user permissions, create workspaces and projects, and configure default workspace settings.

successor

Any user story that cannot start or finish until another user story is completed.

supplemental requirements

Describe behavioral and non-behavioral requirements of the system such as functional requirements, nonfunctional requirements, and design constraints.

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T

tab

A main navigation heading in Rally. Each tab contains several pages, which display various data. Rally tabs are My Home, Plan, Track, Quality, Reports, and Search.

tag

A unique identifier that may be applied to a work item to indicate category or class. You may use tags as a filter to find specific sets of work items on summary pages.

task

A unit of work that, when performed, contributes to the fulfillment and completion of a scheduled user story within the iteration. Tasks allow decomposition of stories into manageable units of work. Team members can take responsibility and ownership for each task, providing estimates and work left to do for completion.

task estimate

The amount of effort estimated to complete a single task. Generally recorded in hours, but does not directly correlate to user story estimates.

test case

A set of known behaviors associated with a feature or requirement that define acceptance of work associated with the work item; a test case also captures test results.

test case step

A test case field that informs the user of the actions that must be taken to perform the test.

test driven development

Test Driven Development (TDD) involves writing new test cases covering the desired improvement or new functionality first, then the code necessary to pass the tests is implemented, and finally the software is refactored to accommodate changes.

test folder

A container for related tests that make up a suite, set, or initiative in your system.

test objective

A textual description of what is being tested by the test case.

test plan

A page in Rally that allows you to organize your tests into functional areas representing the structure of your system, or other organizations.

test run

An executable display of a single or collection of test cases, including their steps.

test set

A tool for managing regression testing by allowing a collection of test cases to be run together in a single instance. Available with the Rally Quality Manager product.

timebox

A fixed period of time in which a defined deliverable is scheduled. In addition to fixing the start and end points of timeboxes, teams typically also fix the resources available within the timebox.

to do

The amount of remaining effort required to complete a task. Generally recorded in hours.

tool tip

A description that provides guidance on how to perform activities or steps in using a specific work item.

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U

unit test

A method by which the developers themselves write testing code to test their target code at the module (class, object and interface) level. Developers have access to the internals of the object, method or interface that is being tested. They use a set of open-source and commercial method frameworks to facilitate development, management and execution of unit tests.

user

Represents a login for a person or role within a Rally subscription that can take on specific access privileges.

user story

A listing of acceptance criteria needed to deliver a new feature or piece of work. Generally written from the perspective of a user of the system. A commonly used format is: As a X, I want to Y, so that Z

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V

validation

A validation action evaluates the status of the execution of a test case. Typical validation criteria includes pass, fail, build tested and date tested.

value score

A number that indicates the worth of the portfolio item.

variation

Variations express how the action or task being executed can be done in a different way. Examples are technical or data variations.

velocity

A measure of the amount of accepted work delivered within a timebox. Agile teams typically use the sum of story points associated to accepted user stories delivered in an iteration as their velocity calculation.

verdict

Test case results yield verdicts. Predefined verdict values may include pass, fail, inconclusive, and error, and can be user-defined.

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W

waterfall

A form of software development that agile seeks to change. In waterfall environments, work may not begin on a feature until it meets several requirements first, stalling development. Waterfall projects typically take 2-3 times longer to complete than agile projects.

work items

Items which help define the system, project, and/or team objective. Work items in Rally are user stories, tasks, portfolio items, test cases, test case results, defects, and defect suites.

workspace

An organizational construct within a Rally subscription representing independent departments that contains work items, projects, and settings. Data cannot span from one workspace to another. Rally strongly recommends you limit the number of workspaces you create.

workspace administrator

A user in Rally with permissions to manage a workspace, including adding users, teams, projects, and programs. Workspace administrators are delegated by subscription administrators.

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