THE CHALLENGE
Manual reviews, siloed teams, and no visibility
Ancestry's privacy team needed to keep pace with product and engineering, but their existing processes made that nearly impossible. Three core problems stood out:
- No visibility into what engineering was building
Privacy had no automated way to see what was being developed. Engineering worked in Rally; legal worked in separate tools. The disconnect meant reviews were missed or delayed. - Collaboration scattered across email and Slack
If an engineer had a question for a product manager about a review, it happened in a separate email or Slack thread. Nothing was tracked, nothing was centralized. - Assessments were tedious and repetitive
Privacy reviews were manual, disconnected from engineering tools, and time-consuming. Adoption suffered because the process was too heavy for the value it delivered on low-risk work.
THE SOLUTION
Rally integration bridges engineering and legal teams
Ancestry chose TerraTrue because it could connect directly to Rally, the issue-tracking system their engineering team already used. This was the key unlock.
“That was huge. That was kind of our selling point, to have that automation. I feel like we now have the ability to see data flows. In the past, I honestly didn’t even have a window into that world.”
— Steve Stalder / Senior Privacy Operations Manager
Automatic triage from Rally
When a Rally ticket opens a TerraTrue launch, a gating question determines whether a full privacy review is needed. If the feature doesn't involve personal information, the case closes automatically. If it does, the review routes to the right stakeholders.
"If they answer 'no personal information is being used,' it automatically closes out that TerraTrue case. But we have it on record, so we know it's been completed. If they say yes, then the review continues to the next step."
— Steve Stalder / Senior Privacy Operations Manager
Engineers stay in Rally
Engineers never have to leave their own tool. Reviews, comments, and status updates all sync between Rally and TerraTrue. No hunting for information, no context switching.
"The engineers can stay in Rally, within their own tool. It's not something they have to search for, which is a big advantage for them. Now they're not hunting for it."
— Steve Stalder / Senior Privacy Operations Manager
Real-time collaboration in one place
Teams tag each other directly in reviews. Questions, answers, and decisions are all captured in TerraTrue rather than scattered across email threads and Slack messages.
THE RESULTS
Visibility, speed, and cross-functional collaboration
Complete visibility
Privacy now has automated visibility into everything engineering is building, eliminating blind spots.
Scaled with automation
Automatic risk-scoring, triaging, and routing let a 5-person team keep pace with 1,400+ employees.
Better collaboration
Real-time, cross-functional communication replaced scattered email chains and Slack threads.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What privacy leaders can learn from Ancestry
- Integrate with the tools engineering already uses. Adoption follows when the process lives where your team works.
- Use gating questions to automatically triage low-risk reviews. Not every launch needs a full assessment.
- Centralize collaboration in the review itself. Scattered email and Slack threads create gaps and slow everything down.
- Track everything, even the reviews that close automatically. Having a record matters for compliance and audit readiness.
- A small privacy team can scale with the right automation. Five people covering 1,400+ employees is possible when the manual work is removed.