Identify Dependencies

The Rally sidebar displays on the left side of any Work Item Detail page. It organizes related artifact links and makes them easy to access. Use the sidebar to manage and navigate to listings of associated artifacts for work items.

Your display of sidebar links will vary depending upon the work item being viewed.

Each sidebar link shows additional artifacts in reference to the displayed work item detail. The sidebar link displays a number in parenthesis (8) indicating the number of related artifacts per link regardless of any project view scoping applied. In some cases the display may read (6 of 8). In this case, the summary view may not display the number of artifacts indicated next to the link because the artifacts may reside in a project for which you do not have access permissions.

An association is a term that implies a general type of relationship, and is used to assist you in tracking and relating your work items. Each association is displayed in the sidebar found on the Work Item Detail page.

When deleting any work item that has associations, the system will present multiple options for handling the associations. You may delete and remove the work item and its associations, continue with the delete and change the associations for the work item to none, or cancel the entire operation.

Test cases

You can create a new test case result, associate a stand-alone test case to a feature, log a defect, or add an attachment from a test case. You can view these associations from the Test Case Detail sidebar.

Defects

Defects allow you to create a test case and both appear on the Defect Detail sidebar. Deleting the defect automatically removes the task, but the test cases remain intact.

Tasks

Tasks are derived from user stories and defects, and as such can only be created from the user story or defect. There is an automatic association between the user story or defect and the task. These associations can be viewed on the sidebar of the work item or the task. An individual task may be deleted with no effect on the work item.

In Rally, a parent/child relationship refers to a relationship between hierarchical projects, user stories or test folders (requires Rally Quality Manager module). This relationship implies ownership. As such, the parent owns its child projects or user stories. Parents can be decomposed into infinite levels of children. All parent/child relationships for projects and user stories are displayed in the sidebar of the related detail page. The parent/child hierarchy for test folders displays on the Test Plan Summary view. Actions performed on the parent have implications upon the child.

If a parent user story has been scheduled and a new child user story is added to the parent, the following actions take place:

• Tasks of a parent story are moved to the first child story.
• Children inherit a copy of the values for Release, Iteration, State, Rank, Owner, and Blocked from their parent.
• Test cases and defects remain associated with the parent.

Rally uses predecessors and successors to indicate an ordinal relationship in which one user story is dependent upon the completion of a another user story. By assigning a predecessor to an existing user story, an order is established between the two in which the successor user story is dependent upon functionality contained in the predecessor user story. Work cannot begin on the successor user story until the predecessor user story is completed. User story states are rolled up to help you know when a predecessor is complete and work on a successor can begin. A blocked predecessor state is rolled up and easy to see from any User Story Summary view.

In Rally you can:

• Create user story predecessors. You can create a new user story as a predecessor, or choose an existing user story. Creating a predecessor automatically indicates a successor.
• View all predecessors and successors from the User Story Detail page.
• View the predecessors and successors for a user story from multiple Summary views such as the User Story Summary, Iteration Status, or Release Status views.
• View the rolled up state of predecessors from the Successor User Story Detail page.
• Receive email notifications when a predecessor or successor is changed.

Predecessors and successors can span projects within a workspace.

Each Work Item Detail View contains a sidebar which displays all relationships to the current work item in a linked view. The sidebar located on the left of the page displays all possible associated artifact types that can be related to the current work item as links. Each link is followed by a number in parenthesis indicating the number of associated artifacts that can be viewed in the resulting summary view.

Click any association link to navigate to the related artifact summary view. The Summary view offers all actions of the typical Work Item Summary view. As you navigate through the related summary views, the Actions button options vary in relation to the artifact you are viewing.

Use the show and hide icons to control the sidebar display.

View the hierarchical tree from a child user story to its parent in a pop-up pane in the Summary view from the user story ID.

• Choose Description and the full description of the child user story displays in the pop-up pane (default view).
• Choose Hierarchy to traverse the hierarchical tree from your current child user story to the top-level parent user story.
• Click the Show Detail icon to display a pop-up pane of the full detail of the selected user story.

You can add a predecessor user story to a new or existing user story. A predecessor user story is one whose implementation must be completed before work on another user story can begin.

To create a new user story as a predecessor to an existing user story:

1. From the Predecessors Summary view, click the Actions button and select New Predecessor...
2. On the Editor, complete the user story fields and click Save.

   The result is a new user story with a predecessor relationship from the current user story.

To create a predecessor relationship between two existing user stories:

1. From the Predecessors Summary view, click the Actions button and select Add Predecessor(s).
2. On the Choose Predecessors page, check the chosen user stories and click Choose. You can select multiple predecessors.

   The chosen user stories display on the Predecessor Summary view.

Predecessor/successor relationships are only allowed between user stories in the same workspace.

The User Story Predecessor Summary view displays all user stories that must be completed before work can be initiated on the currently viewed user story. Both Actions button menu options and inline actions are allowed from this summary view. Use the Predecessors Summary view to manage each user story's ordinal relationships.

From the User Story Predecessors Summary page you can:

• Remove a predecessor user story. The user story remains intact.
• Edit a predecessor user story.
• Copy one predecessor user story to another new predecessor user story. The user story is copied and a predecessor implementation order is automatically set.

The User Story Successor Summary view displays all user story successors that depend on the completion of another user story before work can be initiated on the currently-viewed user story. Both Actions button menu options and in line actions are allowed from this summary view. Use the Successors Summary view to manage each user story's successor ordinal relationships.

From the User Story Successors Summary you can:

• Edit a successor user story.
• Copy one successor user story to another new successor user story. The user story is copied and a successor implementation order is automatically set.

You can view a collection of all predecessor and successors and their states for a single user story as you work and plan from any Summary view that displays user stories. This includes:

• The User Story Summary View
• The Iteration Status View
• The Release Status View
• The Predecessor or Successor Summary view
• The Work Item Status view

This allows you to view any relationships that impact your targeted user story without leaving your current view.

You can easily determine if your user story has a predecessor and successor by viewing the related icon in a user story row. When present, the following icons denote:

• The user story has one or many predecessors.
• The user story has one or many predecessors with a blocked state.
• The user story has one or many successors.
• The user story has both predecessors and successors.
• The user story has both predecessors and successors, with one or more predecessors in a blocked state.

Hover your mouse over any of the above icons to display a pop-up detail of the relationships. The resulting detail presents a header row containing the viewed user story, and two tabs that display predecessors and successors associated to the user story. From this pop-up you can also perform multiple activities.

Use the pop-up Successors tab to view those user stories that are awaiting completion of the current user story before work on them can begin.

View a rolled up state of the predecessors in the Detail View of the user story.