My organization is trying to find an out of the box way with Azure DevOps to see which features were 'committed to' at the start of the release, and which are delivered. The Velocity report would be perfect, except Features are assigned to areas that are configured to run off of sprints that are child-iterations of larger release-iterations, and we want the data at the release-iteration level.
We're able to build queries that can mostly deliver this, but that method doesn't track changes, just shows you a current point in time view of how things are.
The goal is to have data we can use to evaluate if we're making commitments we can keep.
How have other organizations tackled this sort of problem? How do you tie committed vs. actuals at the Feature level?
I could understand your requirements. But based on my test, Velocity Report has some limitations:
For example:
If the Iteration Path has Child Iteration, it will show the child Iteration on Velocity Report. As you said , release-iteration will not show in the Report.
So it cannot meet all your needs.
I tested some related extensions and existing charts, and it seems that there is no tool that can improve or replace the Velocity Report .
For a workaround:
For Child Iteration, you still could use the Velocity Report to record the process.
For the Parent Iteration, you could create different queries to show the process(Planned
, Completed,Completed Late and so on). You can use query to get the work item list of the corresponding state.
Here are examples:
Planned :
Completed:
...
Then you could add them to the Dashboards(Query Title Widget):
On the other hand, this requirement is valuable.
You could add your request for this feature on our UserVoice site, which is our main forum for product suggestions.
Related
I need to calculate effort for each feature in my backlog.
Every sprint or iteration I must make the sum of all completed work time of the tasks and manually add to the parent feature.
I have not found anything can make it automatically. Do you know if something exists?
I am following this lisk:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/queries/query-numeric?view=azure-devops#sum-of-remaining-work-per-developer
But I cannot grouping either by User Story or Feature...
Here the query:
Among the other columns I added the parent:
I wanted to add the feature but I cannot find the correct Column
Then I created a chart:
But here I cannot find either the parent column or the feature.
Azure DevOps may sum only on the backlogs. Check this link: Display rollup progress or totals in Azure Boards. Additionally, you may try to use Excel integration or Power BI.
Everyone!
I'm current working on a company that just started to use Azure DevOps Server.
We're used to classify our work items using S for Small, M for Medium and L for Large. As an internal convention, the proportion between them is:
1 Medium = 2 Small.
1 Large = 4 Small.
So, to keep using this, we created a new field on our work items to fill the estimated size for each work item.
It was all good since then, but now we're starting to get our development metrics from Azure DevOps using queries. On the queries results, I didn't find a way to convert the size (S, M or L) into a numeric value to display on charts.
What I need is, for example, create a burndown chart considering the amount of 'S' work, following the proportion that I've mentioned above.
Anyone can suggest a way to solve my problem without changing our estimation pattern?
On the queries results, I didn't find a way to convert the size (S, M or L) into a numeric value to display on charts.
We do not have any built-in feature about this.
For create a burndown chart, you need to use Remaining work/Story points on tasks (and bugs if they're managed with tasks) to populate burndown data. Additionally, the dates on those work items matter. To calculate burndown we're using an "as of" query that asks what the work item looked like on a specific day. For example, we're asking what the remaining work of tasks of User Story.
More details please take a look at our official doc here-- Configure and monitor sprint burndown
As a workaround in your scenario, you could export your work items to Excel. Then use Excel report to achieve what you need.
Our teams are using Azure DevOps. We're using the Agile framework and an enterprise release management approach (essentially, SAFe). Our increments are based on the quarters of the year -- for us, this equals 6 sprints.
My goal is to be able to view work scheduled within the current increment as the sprints move along.
I currently have a query that displays current sprint plus the future 5, to give me 3 month's worth of work (see below).
The trouble with this is it has to be edited after each sprint so it only displays the current increment's work. (I have to change it to include the previous sprint and reduce the number of future sprints otherwise it doesn't display completed work in this increment, as well as showing upcoming work from the next increment.)
Increment Planning Query
Sorry for any inconvenience.
I am afraid there is no such increment planning query, that because the value of CurrentIteration will be different due to the change of the current date.
If you want use the #CurrentIteration macros, you have to modify this query after each sprint.
As workaround, you could specify the each Iteration value in the query, like:
With this workaround, we do not need modify the query after each sprint, just need update it after each quarter.
If above workaround not work for you, you could add your request for this feature on our UserVoice site (https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/idea/post.html?space=21 ), which is our main forum for product suggestions. Thank you for helping us build a better Azure DevOps:
Hope this helps.
I was looking on VSTS, but I didn't found how to estimate our Tasks/users story in hours instead of Story point.
Is this possible?
I know the pro(and cons) of story points, buf for now our team want to move progressively with agile, and we don't want to start to estimate in story points.
Thank you!
Edit as requested, I currently use the agile template(but open to change)
Declare "One story point is equal to one hour" and use the existing field as-is.
TL;DR
Use the built-in scrum template
If you use the built-in Scrum template Tasks have Remaining Work and PBI's have Effort. Nothing says Remaing Work = hours or Effort = story points.
If you want to estimate your tasks in number of 4 hour work blocks it will take to complete you can do that, if you want to do it in hours you can do that. Same goes for effort you can put any number in there you want as long as you make sure everyone in your team understands what 1 or 5 or 10 means.
So if possible switch to the scrum template, your question is exactly the reason why these fields have a more generic name than Story Points or Remaining Hours in the scrum template. Added bonus is that your team can switch definition if they feel like some other number or unit suits your estimation process better.
This blog post makes a good comparison between the built-in different templates:
https://nkdagility.com/choosing-a-process-template-for-your-team-project/
If you are an administrator in VSTS select the VSTS button at the top left of the screen. Then select then select the cog.
This will take you to a page where you can edit a number of settings. Select Process.
In the process window choose the process your project uses. You can see which one your project is using by the numbers on the right hand side of the process. Once you’ve found your process select it by clicking.
Then choose the work item type you wish to change. So in this instance user story.
Once in the task you want to change select add group and name the group want to add and select it's placement on the card.
When the group has been added select it and choose the ellipses (...). Then select Add Field. Customise the field to be either a new one of your choosing or choose a predefined one.
Once you have added this step repeat the process on this page to customise and style the task how you like. Once done navigate back to your project in VSTS and the changes will be applied
I have a VSTS project based on the Scrum process with two Area Paths for frontend and backend teams. For all Backlog item boards I created a new column to indicate what is 'ready for testing' (splitted in doing and done). For the state mapping I could only chose 'Commited' from the dropdown list.
The root area is configured to include both sub-areas and should provide a broad overview for the product owner about the progress and the tester to see what he needs to do.
My problem is, that when a team moves an item to this column, the change of state is not reflected on the general board. How can I achieve this? Or what are best practices to deal with additional states like 'ready for deployment' and 'ready for test'?
Kanban board states are "per team" so you won't see the change reflected in another team's board (in this case, the top level default team).
If this was on-premise we could add a new underlying State to the Work Item so it worked across teams. I believe this is coming for VSTS but it's not there yet.
VSTS and TFS 2015 Update 1 allow you to Query by Kanban board changes which means you could have a Work Item Query which shows all the items across teams that are Ready For Test on the board.
Depending on exactly what you want to see in your query results, you'll probably have to do something slightly clever with grouping the clauses of your query - ie. (PBI Area Path = Area 1 AND Column State = Ready for test) OR (PBI Area Path = Area 2 AND Column State = Ready for test)