I am working as a Product Owner for a development team using scrum, we are using VSTS for our backlog.
So far I have been organizing my backlog using Epics and Features, I am mainly using features.
I use Features both to group work items but also for keeping control of delivering stuff. If I for instance know that I need to deliver a certain functionality a certain day then I create a Feature for that and include the needed work items. I need to do that because I manage many projects simultaneously.
So far, so good.
But now Product Management want to start creating Epics and Features for them to organize work. I can live without the Epics, and it is fine that they create the features and I add work items. But when I start executing I need some way to organize into deliverables.
Any idea how I can do that, basically I need a group like features but in between feature and work item
You can add tags for your and other Epics to distinguish them...
basically I need a group like features but in between feature and work item
Alternatively you can create a new work item type like features. Please see Customize a project using an inherited process for details.
Create an inherited process
Custom the process
Add a new work item type
...
Apply the customized process to your project
UPDATE:
You need to add a new Portfolio backlog level, but in Azure DevOps (VSTS) the new Portfolio backlogs can only be added as the top level, that means the hierarchy should be Deliverable > Epic > Feature > Backlog Item.
So, in this case you can rename them to match your requirements, for example rename Feature to Deliverable, Epic to Feature, Deliverable to Epic...
Please see Customize your backlogs or boards for details.
Related
Since the process of one A/B test usually takes multiple sprints I would like to add another board in which I can add the A/B tests (as F.E. features). User stories for one sprint can then be added to a specific sprint for my team (which consists of a few specialists and a developer). This way I am able to overview the status (research phase, test , code writing, running, analysis, etc.) of all tests in one overview. I have not been able to find out how this is possiblie within Azure Devops, or if there is a work around. Can anyone help me?
My team also works in projects other than A/B tests, which means we cannot use the boards section.
Unless there is a hidden way to add another board to a team?
You could Copy or clone a work item to add the user stories or tests to a new boards. Open the user story you want to clone, then click Create copy of work item and choose whether to include exist links, attachments and child work items. After creating, change the Area and Iteration to your target boards.
Update
In Azure DevOps you can only create boards by creating a team. The team board is created as a side-effect of creating the team. Please refer to Manage and configure team tools and Configure and customize Azure Boardsfor details.
After creating and configuring a new team, you could see the boards in the dropdown list.
I have problem with configuration of AzureDevOps process.
My goal is simply automate work items - when work item changes state to done or is in state done on certain board I want to transfer it on other board.
I tried to achieve this by applying custom rules in my organization. Example:
I navigate to Organization Settings, select Process then I select process from list (is inherited from Scrum parent). Then I select bug (for example) and go to rules tab.
Here is screen of my configuration
Both Board no.1 and Board no.2 exist as Team Projects. I've added clearing assign to field and this one works properly.
I wondering if there is much easier way to automate moving work items through boards or team projects on status change.
I wondering if there is much easier way to automate moving work items
through boards or team projects on status change.
For this issue, I am afraid there is no easier way to achieve this requirement. Azure Devops has provided a built-in custom rule function to achieve this. This is already a very easy way.
In addition, we can also achieve this through the azure logic app, but this needs to be set in the azure portal. I don’t think it will be more convenient than custom rules.
To move work items to another project, you must be a member of the Project Administrators group or be granted explicit permissions to move work items.
I'm trying to configure and customize the Azure DevOps tool as per the requirement for my application development team. In the boards setting, I have selected the option "Bugs are managed with Tasks" to get a good view of my sprint items. However, my team reports post production issues as Bugs in the tool and enabling the above mentioned setting doesn't allow me to view these Bugs in the Kanban Boad. Reason is they are not linked with any User Story.
I have been exploring the options in Backlog levels options available in the Processes settings and found that the Backlog level "Stories" is tagged only for User Story.
My query here is can i try linking Bug and Task to the already existing "Stories" backlog level. Azure DevOps does gives option to create a custom backlog level and custom Work item type. I would like to customize the existing functionality to best fit my team. Please let me know if there is a work around.
Query regarding Backlog Levels in Azure Devops
This behavior is by designed and there is no way to fix it at present for the exists Work item type Bug.
Because there is only one requirement backlog and it cannot be removed, but can be renamed and edited:
There is an user voice about this request on the Developer Community.
As workaround, we could create a custom the Work item type and add it to backlog level, for example, I create a custom Work item type BugWithoutTask, then add it portfolio backlog:
Then go to backlog settings and enable new backlog:
Now, we could these BugwithoutTask in the Kanban Boad:
You could check this document for some more deails.
Hope this helps.
Within our software, we want to implement a grid-style "Editor" for filling in information for various components. This Editor is itself a feature, and is expected to do several things out-of-the box. Most of these of these behaviors are simple and work well as Work Items.
However, one feature of the Editor that we want to implement is an auto-fill button for a particular column. This auto-fill feature is fairly involved and will really require multiple work items of its own. So it's essentially a feature within a feature.
However, from what I can tell, DevOps doesn't play very nice with features within features. You can do it, by creating a Work Item under a feature and then converting it to a feature. But then you can't drag to re-order those sub-features like you can sub-Work Items.
So, what's the "proper", best-practice, officially-supported way to handle "features of other features"? Just create the sub-features at the same level as the main feature? This seems very unorganized... but I don't know of a better fully-supported way...
EDIT: To clarify, one of the reasons we'd like to have "sub-Features" at the same level as "sub-Work Items" (in addition to just grouping everything relating to the parent feature together) is so that we can re-order and prioritize sub-Features amid the rest of the sub-Work Items for the parent feature.
Agree with Daniel,creating a new backlog level between Epics and Features is a solution.
To do it , first，your project needs to use a inherited process . You can create inherited process in the Process of Boards in Organization Setting.
Then in the inherited process, you can create a new work item type as a backlog level between Epics and Feature.
I want to create a custom kanban board based on a new query for my team.
The ones you get by default seem to be an all or nothing thing, we would like to break down our work outside of sprint planning in to "feature boards" that contain items that may span multiple sprints but are towards a common sub goal of our project.
Is this possible?
That's not the common scenario which TFS/Azure-Devops designed for.
Based on your requirement, you can try creating multiple teams and areas. Area paths allow you to group work items by team, product, or feature area. Then set team default to select the areas the specific team owns below. The selected area paths will determine what shows up on your team's backlog/board and what work items your team is responsible for.
Please see below articles for more information:
Kanban basics
Set team defaults
About area and iteration paths (aka sprints)
Besides, you can also try this extension: Kanban Board Tools, it provides a set of tools to enhance Kanban board usage within TFS and VSTS.
You might want to take a look at this free extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=realdolmen.querybasedboards, that allows you to display a query result into columns, based on work item states configuration.