Rally Software

We are using CA Agile (I still call it Rally) to manage project work as well as maintenance items (keeping the lights on).  We have three development teams all working on different initiatives as well as taking a maintenance bug or fix as they have capacity. 

Prioritizing of the maintenance bugs/fixes, etc. is done outside of the teams by other stakeholders.  We actually have a "maintenance" project team in Rally to house all of these items.  We just don't have any development being done with that - its just a holding place to store and prioritize the work.  As the team(s) have capacity they go pull that work and move it to their team.

Problem is - when that work is pulled we don't re-parent it and as it moves around the team's backlog based on their internal priority it messes up the view for the stakeholders that are looking at the maintenance items.

How do other people use Rally to track maintenance items?  Anyone got something they like? 

Hi Rob, great question! Here's some ideas for how you could track this work based on what customers have done in similar situations:

• Use tags, like "maintenance", to be able to track the work after it gets spread to the Teams.
• Use a color, like gray, to track the work.
• Use a field, like Investment Category, to track what work is Maintenance. We use this field at CA, and I've even made a custom app to show a pie chart of spend by investment category.

I'm not sure if those would solve what your exact problem is, as it's a little hard to tell how the view for stakeholders gets messed up, so if you think it wouldn't just let me know and I'm happy to give other ideas.

And like Rob, I'd love to hear from others what's working for them!