Are you interested in taking advantage of the IBM Jazz Reporting Service (JRS) reports delivered to support enterprise scaled agile environments but aren’t sure how to get started? Maybe you’ve tried to import them but haven’t been successful? Or maybe you aren’t using the Scaled Agile Framework ® (SAFe®) specifically, but still want some of the great reports we have and are unsure whether you can use them? If that’s you, read on… and be sure to take a look at the new video we’ve posted to show you exactly how to do this: Jazz Reporting Service: Import the Scaled Agile (SAFe) reports.

Scaled Agile Reporting Resources

First and foremost, let me explain the resources available to you.

• Enterprise Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) Landing Page: Visit this page to learn all about the IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (previously Collaborative Lifecycle Management) support for enterprise scaled agile methodologies and SAFe in particular. All important articles and related links are available from this page.
• Agile@Scale Reports page: This site includes all of the resources you need to gain access to the great reports we’ve developed for enterprise environments.
• Enterprise Scaled Agile Reporting Guidelines document: Read this first before attempting to import the report archive files into your ELM Report Builder environment.

Importing the Reports

Many of the reports delivered have no dependency on your adoption of the SAFe methodology or use of the SAFe templates, although we certainly encourage this as a best practice for transforming to a lean and agile way of working. The SAFe-specific reports largely focus on the tracking and planning aspects of enterprise agile and can be used in deployments that include IBM Engineering Workflow Management (EWM), previously called Rational Team Concert (RTC), but have no dependency on use of any other ELM applications.  A handful of the reports are cross-domain in nature and expect that you are also using IBM Engineering DOORS Next Generation (DOORS Next) and IBM Engineering Test Management (ETM), previously called Rational DOORS Next Generation (RDNG) and Rational Quality Manager (RQM), respectively. How can you tell? Good question…

It’s simple really. When you try to import the report archive files into Report Builder, you will be informed about reports that successfully imported as well as those that had to be skipped based on your tooling environment. So let’s say you have a clean ELM tooling environment, just installed, no project areas created, and you try to import the SAFe reports. You will see something like this:

Looks a little scary, but it really isn’t. Report Builder is telling you that 8 reports were successfully imported. It’s also saying that 39 reports had to be skipped because of missing metadata or something like that. Why? Because the 8 reports have no dependency on anything “SAFe” and can be used in any ELM tooling configuration using any templates. That’s great! Now you know which reports are SAFe-related and which are for enterprise reporting in general.

Report Builder does give you details about why the reports were skipped, but it is a bit archaic. Lots of technical stuff, like this:

In layman’s terms, either you do not have SAFe metadata available to Report Builder or you do not have SAFe metadata for all of the ELM applications that are required. In either of these cases, it may or may not be a big deal to you. You can still get some of the reports that support enterprise environments.

Okay, let’s say that you do want all of the reports. In that case, you need some SAFe metadata. Not a lot though. In order to successfully import all of the reports, you simply need to follow the steps outlined in the documentation associated with your version of ELM. In general, you will need SAFe-based project areas created using the SAFe templates or configured for SAFe. And remember, if you make a mistake, you can always start over!

The video referenced above walks you through all of this, so please go take a look. As always, we are here to help you with anything related to our enterprise scaled agile reporting, so don’t hesitate to reach out. And, of course, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated!

The IBM SAFe Team (safeinfo@wwpdl.vnet.ibm.com)