Ask the Expert - Real-time Agile with Suman Bhowmick
Join @SumanKumar in this month's Ask the Expert (June 17th - June 28th)
Message from Suman Bhowmick: Hi all! I am looking forward to interact with you guys and answer your questions about Realtime Agile - Features, Agile Workbench, Jira Integration, Rally integration, for a start.
Ask the Expert Rules
- Follow the Product Support Community's Community Rules of Engagement
- This is not a Live Chat - Suman will reply to your questions over the course of this two-week event
- Questions should be clearly and succinctly expressed
- Questions should be of interest to many others in the audience
- Have fun!
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi All,
Agile Workbench enables business stakeholders to provide feedback and requirements from right inside the app and then automatically translates the feedback into agile artifacts like user stories, bugs. And the best thing is that if needed the Agile workbench can be integrated with 3rd party agile project management tools like Jira and Rally through our marketplace.
The Pega Platform is the first no-code application development platform that provides a real-time, continuous, and truly seamless collaboration between business and IT throughout the entire app dev process.
Know more about agile workbench here: https://www.pega.com/products/pega-platform/agile-workbench And feel free to post your questions if any on this amazing feature.
Regards,
Suman
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Varun
Hi Varun
As a best practice, to integrate with JIRA, your Pega Platform development operator ID should ideally match your Jira user ID. However, if your IDs for the two systems are not the same, you can provide a different, valid project management user ID for JIRA. On the Operator menu, click Preferences, and update the User ID in the Project management section. This is the user id which would be used for changes done in the Jira items.
For authentication, we use PM_JIRA_AuthProfile Authentication Profile. Before integration, you need to update the PM_JIRA_AuthProfile Authentication Profile instance and populate it with the user ID and password that you will use to access your JIRA system through REST authentication.
Let me know if you have any more questions on this.
Regards,
Suman
Pegasystems Inc.
GB
Hi. The workload for setting up projects in PMF/Agile Studio has always been quite high. Are there any reference configurations or templates available to get a fast start? Are there easy ways to synchronise the team's operators between environments and Agile Studio?
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi,
I would suggest having a look at https://community.pega.com/system/files/media/pdf/agile-studio-81-implementation-guide.pdf This guide provides system administrators with detailed instructions about how to perform post-installation setup and configuration tasks that should be completed before users begin working in the Agile Studio application.
Regards,
Suman
Farmers Insurance
US
Hi Suman,
We are looking to integrate Rally to PEGA for below reasons (as of now).
1. Tag the code changes while checking-in to a user story. I believe, this is possible. If so, is there any reporting feature available to list down the rules associated to each user story ?
2. To and fro feedback between PEGA and Rally. It is possible as explained in "https://www.pega.com/products/pega-platform/agile-workbench"
3. Kick-off pega deployment (CI/CD) based on a story's status change. Is this possible and are there any specific APIs for this use case ?
Thanks,
Nishanth
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Nishanth,
Thanks for putting your question here. It's great to see that you are considering using Agile workbench integrated with Rally. Please find my comments below to your queries.
1. Tag the code changes while checking-in to a user story. I believe, this is possible. If so, is there any reporting feature available to list down the rules associated to each user story ? - You can see what are the rules associated with each feature. We don't provide the option to view the list of the rules associated with user stories or bugs. You might be aware that users can associate each user stories or bugs to a feature. When they use those while checking in, a link between the feature and the rule is established. You can see those rules at Associated rules tab when you open a specific feature.
Hi Nishanth,
Thanks for putting your question here. It's great to see that you are considering using Agile workbench integrated with Rally. Please find my comments below to your queries.
1. Tag the code changes while checking-in to a user story. I believe, this is possible. If so, is there any reporting feature available to list down the rules associated to each user story ? - You can see what are the rules associated with each feature. We don't provide the option to view the list of the rules associated with user stories or bugs. You might be aware that users can associate each user stories or bugs to a feature. When they use those while checking in, a link between the feature and the rule is established. You can see those rules at Associated rules tab when you open a specific feature.
2. To and fro feedback between PEGA and Rally. It is possible as explained in "https://www.pega.com/products/pega-platform/agile-workbench" - Yes, absolutely correct.
3. Kick-off pega deployment (CI/CD) based on a story's status change. Is this possible and are there any specific APIs for this use case? This is possible. But no out of the box solution available for the same. We do have API to start a CI/CD pipeline. So you can do the custom implementation to call the CI/CD API when story status is updated in Agile workbench.
Regards,
Suman
PEGA PARTNER
CH
Hi Suman,
I had posted a doubt in community, but I've been recommended to ask you:
The thing is I have already integrated agile workbench to agile studio but I can not see the feedback created in agile workbench in agile studio (I'm only seeing bugs and stories), so maybe i need to do any config about that. I will appreciate any help!
Thx in advance
Carlos
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Carlos,
Feedback in Agile workbench is meant to be local to workbench. We don't sync them with Agile Studio or Jira or CA Agile central. These feedback needs to be actioned from Agile Workbench and spun-off as Bugs or User stories or you can choose it Reject them. Once they are spun-off, the new Bug or User story will get created in Agile studio instantly.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Suman
PEGA PARTNER
CH
Hi Suman,
thanks for the answer, it's now clear for me.
I'm trying to orchestrate the agile method for CI and DevOps so for me it's important consolidate all feedbacks in one place.
I would like to share to you what do you think about having multiple environments or nodes, do you think could be a way to consolidate all the feedbacks in only one place (maybe pass feedbacks from production or staging to development environment), if no you force dev team to check every one of the environments to see if there's new feedback and not sounds very agile.
Thx for all
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hello,
In most of the scenarios, we anticipate that the feedback will be coming from the end users who would be using the application. The Developers, QA, BA of an application are very unlikely to create feedback for the same application; rather they would create Bugs and User stories. Thus we anticipate that in most of the scenarios Feedback will be created in the production system. We have options available to show and hide Bugs and User stories in Agile workbench which is quite useful while exposing Agile workbench in prod systems. So you can consider adding the agile workbench in your end user portal.
Having said that, I understand this may not work in all business scenarios. In some cases, the BA would need to look at the feedback in both Prod and Dev systems and action on them. Very remote chances of feedback coming in from QA and Pre-prod systems.
Regards,
Suman
PEGA PARTNER
CH
Hi Suman,
thx for the answer, I understand now your approach about feedbacks in production environment. Anyway it seems to me very recommended to improve the integration between workbench and agile studio to get the feedbacks. Now you need to copy and paste manually all the feedbacks of the users an insert in agile studio one by one if you want to have traceability among feedback and user histories in agile studio.
Thx for your comments.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Hemanth,
You can add pxExpress portal in your current Access Group. Once added, you should be able to see App studio.
Regards,
Suman
Infosys Ltd
IN
Hi Suman,
Hi Suman,
I'm facing error as "Enter a valid CA Agile Central URL" for the URL https://rally1.rallydev.com/slm/webservice/v2.0 while configuring integration .
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi,
If you are sure about the validity of the URL, please make sure you have updated the PM_CAAgileCentral Authentication Profile and populated it with the correct user ID and password that you will use to access your CA Agile Central system through REST authentication.
Regards,
Suman
Cognizant
US
How are the on-the-fly changes (happening very frequent) from client accommodated in workbench. Is there any add on to track such changes/updates to stories? Of course the Audit/History does show the updates but updates to a story which is close to deadline shall highlight the impact on its delivery and keep the corresponding Assignee posted.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Alekhya,
There is no OOTB feature to show the recent changes in Agile workbench. You can consider setting up a process where any changes to the user story should be followed by a comment about the change in brief in the pulse tagging the owner. This would allow everyone to see what has been updated off late and be on the same page. Alternatively, as you have mentioned, you can use the audit capability and customize the UI to show the Audit history for the user story.
Regards,
Suman
PEGA PARTNER
CH
Hi there,
i hope you can indicate to me if anybody has the same layout in Scrum Board. In documentation the user stories are showed in first column but in the real world It's not the same and for me it's loosing the kanban way.
See my attachments to see the 2 versions of the same view:
1. Documentation agile studio user guide
2. A real installation i pega cloud of Agile Studio.
Do you think I need to do any configuration?.
Thx in advance
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi,
Yes, there are real-world implementations with this layout. Even Pega internally uses the same layout.
I wouldn't consider this anti-kanban. User stories are not exactly in the first row. Rather they span across all the rows (You can see it in the second screenshot that you had shared). If you see closely you will notice that you will get to see different tasks in different columns. User stories are bigger items and they should be sub-divided into smaller tasks to be managed properly. Thus teammates get to move the task from one column to another. You can see Bugs and issues are available to be moved around the columns on the board.
Regards,
Suman
PEGA PARTNER
CH
Hi Suman,
thx for the answer, I understand now your point. Then I have new questions for you if you can guide me more...
Q1. So if we need to create into user stories tasks to see them in kanban, how can i see this new tasks (sub level) in pega dev studio for a developer?.
Q2. Is there any way to create issues from agile workbench to sync in agile studio?. In your opinion which role should create the issues?.
Thx in advance.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi,
Agile workbench is meant to be extremely lightweight, thus it only supports User stories, Bugs, and Feedback. But I see the point you are raising.
For the second point, only User stories and Bugs are synched with Agile Studio from Agile workbench. We don't even allow the users to create issues from Agile workbench. Providing all the features of Agile studio would defeat the purpose of having Agile workbench. An issue is an impediment or non-technical problem that arises during the project execution. Thus it can be created by anyone from the team.
Thanks,
Suman
Cognizant
IN
Can we integrate Agile workbench with other Agile Tools like Microsoft Team Foundation Server?
I understand we can integrate with JIRA and Rally but wanted to check on the feasibility to integrate with other tools.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Rajendra,
As you said we have components available to integrate with Jira and Rally. Agile workbench is completely extendable to use any other external project management system, provided there are APIs available from the target project management system.
Here is the knowledge base article explaining how to create a component that integrates the Agile Workbench tool with the external project management system of your choice. https://community.pega.com/knowledgebase/integrating-agile-workbench-external-project-management-system
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Suman
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Thank you for an amazing session on Real-time Agile! We will be closing this session (reluctantly) today. However, please continue posting your questions using the regular 'Write a Post' button.
Big thank you to @SumanKumar for being an amazing expert!