Choose Kendis if
- Your teams work in Jira or Azure DevOps and will keep doing so.
- You are moving off Rally and need PI Planning on the new tracker.
- You want a published per-user price and a six-month trial.
- You want PI Objectives, ROAM and a confidence vote ready to use.
- You want to license planners only, not every team member.
Choose Rally if
- Rally is, and will remain, your system of record for agile work.
- You need an on-premises system with data inside your own borders.
- You want backlog, quality and portfolio management in one product.
- You use Broadcom Clarity for investment planning.
What is the best Rally alternative for PI Planning?
For organisations on Jira or Azure DevOps, Kendis is a strong Rally alternative for PI Planning. It adds a program board, dependencies, PI Objectives, a ROAM risk register and a confidence vote to the tracker you already use. Kendis does not integrate with Rally, so if your teams work in Rally, Rally's own planning is the natural choice.
Broadcom describes Rally as "the foundation for business agility and digital transformation", part of its ValueOps platform.[1] It is a full agile lifecycle tool with its own backlog, portfolio hierarchy and capacity planning. The comparison with Kendis is therefore less tool against tool and more approach against approach: one system that holds everything, or a planning layer over a tracker your teams already use.
Kendis vs Rally at a glance
| Kendis | Rally | |
|---|---|---|
| Type of product | PI Planning layer over Jira or Azure DevOps | Enterprise agile system of record[1] |
| Pricing | $14 per user per month billed annually, $16 monthly. You license the people who plan, not every Jira user. Pricing | Not published. Contact Broadcom for a demo.[2] |
| Free trial | 6 months free, no credit card | Not stated on Broadcom's Rally pages |
| Deployment | Cloud or self-hosted on your own infrastructure | SaaS, or on-premises with Rally Anywhere[3] |
| Hosting region | Your choice at signup: EU (OVHcloud, Frankfurt) or US (AWS) | US and EU SaaS stacks. EU data stays within Europe.[4] |
| Where teams work | Jira or Azure DevOps | In Rally itself |
| Other tools | Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center, Azure DevOps and TFS, two-way | Through ValueOps ConnectALL[5] |
| Rally integration | No | Native |
How do Kendis and Rally compare on PI Planning features?
Rally documents capacity planning for a Program Increment, release tracking with dependencies, risk boards that can be configured for ROAM, and OKRs. Kendis provides the SAFe PI Planning artefacts as ready-made features: PI Objectives with business value, a ROAM register, a confidence vote and predictability reports.
| Feature | Kendis | Rally |
|---|---|---|
| Planning board | Yes. Program board with team rows and iteration columns | Release Tracking page for features and dependencies[6] |
| Capacity and load | Yes. Capacity per team per iteration against planned load | Yes. Capacity plans for a Program Increment or release, with what-if planning[7] |
| Dependency management | Yes. Lines on the board, list view, dependency wheel, due dates and alerts | Yes[6] |
| ROAM risks | Yes. ROAM risk register linked to features | A custom board app "configured to be used to ROAM risks during planning"[8] |
| OKRs | Yes. OKRs and strategic themes | Yes[3] |
| PI Objectives with business value | Yes. Planned and actual business value, linked to features and stories | Not documented |
| Confidence vote | Yes. Per team and for the whole PI | Not documented |
| Predictability reporting | Yes. Predictability and performance reports | Not documented |
| Inspect and Adapt | Yes. Inspect and Adapt module with PI comparisons | Not documented |
| Portfolio hierarchy and investment planning | No. Roadmaps, strategic themes and OKRs, without budgets or financials | Yes. Multi-level portfolio hierarchies, integrated with Clarity[3] |
| Backlog, test and quality management | No. Stays in Jira or Azure DevOps | Yes. Rally is the tracker |
When is Rally the better choice?
Choose Rally when you want a single enterprise system for agile work, from team backlog to portfolio, and especially when it must run on your own infrastructure.
- One system of record. No sync layer, because the work lives in Rally.
- On-premises. Rally Anywhere "allows organizations to keep their data within an organization's borders."[9]
- EU hosting. Broadcom states that data on its EU stack is located within Europe.[4]
- Capacity and what-if planning across releases and Program Increments.[7]
- Investment planning through the link with Clarity.[1]
If your teams work in Rally today and you are not changing tracker, Kendis is not the right tool, because it does not connect to Rally.
Why do teams choose Kendis instead of Rally?
Teams choose Kendis when their developers are already in Jira or Azure DevOps. Moving every team to a new tracker to get program-level planning is a large change. Adding a planning layer is a small one.
Teams keep their tracker
Kendis reads and writes to Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center and Azure DevOps. Nobody on a delivery team has to change tool. Only the people who plan need a Kendis licence, usually 15 to 25 per train.
You can see the price and try it for six months
Kendis is $14 per user per month on annual billing, with six months free and no credit card. Rally pricing is not published.[2]
SAFe artefacts without configuration
PI Objectives with planned and actual business value, a ROAM risk register, the confidence vote, predictability and Inspect and Adapt are standard on every Kendis program board.
A landing place after a Rally migration
Organisations that move from Rally to Jira or Azure DevOps often find the new tracker has less program-level planning than they were used to. Kendis restores that layer. See PI Planning in Jira and PI Planning in Azure DevOps.
How do you try Kendis alongside Rally?
You do not need to replace anything to evaluate Kendis. It reads from and writes to the Jira or Azure DevOps backlog you already have, so you can run it next to Rally for a PI and compare the two on real work.
- Sign up for the six-month free trial and pick EU or US hosting. No credit card is asked for.
- Connect Jira or Azure DevOps and choose the boards or projects for one Agile Release Train.
- Load the features for the next PI with a JQL filter or Azure DevOps query. Linked stories come in with them.
- Run PI Planning on the board: capacity, dependencies, objectives, ROAM and the confidence vote.
- Track the PI against the planning baseline, then decide with two PIs of evidence.
Kendis needs your work to be in Jira or Azure DevOps. If you are mid-migration from Rally, start with the trains that have already moved.
Try Kendis free for 6 months
Kendis is a PI Planning and tracking platform that sits on top of Jira and Azure DevOps. The free trial runs for six months, long enough to plan and track two full PIs with your real backlog before anyone has to approve a budget.
- 6 months free, no credit card
- Choose EU hosting (OVHcloud, Frankfurt) or US hosting (AWS)
- Planning board, dependencies, PI objectives, ROAM risks, solution boards
- Two-way sync with Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center and Azure DevOps
- ISO/IEC 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, DORA Schedule available
- No user caps and no setup costs during the trial
One trial per organisation that has not used Kendis in the last twelve months. After the trial, Premium Cloud is $14 per user per month billed annually, or $16 monthly, and you license only the people who plan. SSO, Kendis AI and premium support are part of paid plans. See pricing and the free trial terms.
Compare Kendis with other PI Planning tools
New to the topic? Read the PI Planning guide or the scaling agile guide.
Kendis vs Rally: frequently asked questions
What is the best alternative to Rally?
It depends on where your teams work. If they are in Jira or Azure DevOps, Kendis adds PI Planning and program-level tracking on top. If you want a full replacement system of record, you would be comparing Rally with Jira or Azure DevOps themselves.
Does Kendis integrate with Rally?
No. Kendis integrates with Jira Cloud, Jira Data Center, Azure DevOps and TFS. It is a fit for organisations that use those tools, including those moving to them from Rally.
How much does Rally cost?
Broadcom does not publish Rally pricing. Kendis is $14 per user per month on annual billing, with six months free.
Who owns Rally?
Broadcom. Rally, formerly CA Agile Central, is sold as part of Broadcom's ValueOps platform.
Can Rally be hosted on-premises or in the EU?
Yes. Broadcom offers Rally as SaaS, including an EU stack, and on-premises as Rally Anywhere. Kendis offers EU hosting on OVHcloud in Frankfurt, US hosting on AWS, and a self-hosted option.
Is Rally or Jira better for SAFe?
Rally has program-level planning built in. Jira relies on Jira Plans, Jira Align or a layer such as Kendis for PI Planning. Kendis exists to give Jira and Azure DevOps teams that program layer.
Sources
Every external claim in this guide links to the primary source below. All links were checked on 12 October 2026.
- Broadcom. Rally product page.
- Broadcom. Contact Rally by Broadcom.
- Broadcom TechDocs. Key capabilities of Rally.
- Broadcom Knowledge Base. Rally data centers.
- Broadcom. ConnectALL integrations.
- Broadcom TechDocs. Release Tracking page (Rally).
- Broadcom TechDocs. Creating a capacity plan (Rally).
- Broadcom TechDocs. Rally risk management.
- Broadcom TechDocs. Rally Anywhere.
How this comparison was made: statements about Rally come from the vendor's own website, documentation and marketplace listing, linked above and checked on 12 October 2026. Statements about Kendis come from Kendis. Products change, so if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it. All product names are trademarks of their respective owners.