Rally spent its first three years mostly on research, and released its first cloud product in late 2004. It was built for Agile, a way of writing software in short sprints instead of giant, years-long plans. Big companies were adopting Agile, and their teams were spread across the world. Rally gave them one place to plan, track and see the work. When the Boulder company went public in April 2013, it had about 1,000 customers.

Born as F4 Technologies

Ryan Martens founded the company in 2001, and it was incorporated in Delaware that July as F4 Technologies. It later took the name Rally Software. The bet was that Agile would spread from small teams to the largest companies, and that those companies would need software to manage it. Rally sold its tools as a cloud service. By its offering, its customers included 34 of the Fortune 100.

Two Years Public

Rally priced its shares at $14 in April 2013 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as RALY. It kept growing but kept losing money, like many cloud companies of its size. In 2015 CA Technologies agreed to buy Rally for about $480 million in cash, or $19.50 a share. CA folded Rally into its tools for managing software development.

Cover: Our Watering Places—Horse-Racing at Saratoga, Winslow Homer. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a horse race (sprints, rally).