how to configure azure devops sprints to days instead of hours - azure-devops

How do you setup Azure Sprints > Board view to show New work and Active work in "Days" instead of hours?
IE: these UI elements here to show a "d" instead of an "h"
screenshot of what I'm describing - in red what I need changed

You used to be able to do this in TFS but I'm afraid this change cant be done in Azure DevOps.

Actually, this is easy and the system is agnostic on the units if you look under the hood. While the sprint capacity and burndown are calculated per day, the number of "units" you use per person per day can be changed.
The default is 8, which is obviously a standard number of work hours. You can simply change this to 1 and now the capacity per person is 1 day. It is just important the unit type (day or hour) that you use in practice between the person capacity and the various work amount fields (size, effort, remaining work, original work, etc.) is the same.
Here are the basic steps to switch to use days:
Create your own process template (unless you have one already)
You will often want to change some of the titles of sections or work items, as they often refer to "hours" by default. To do this you need to have your own Process Template. See the following reference to get started on customizing the templates:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/reference/process-templates/customize-process?view=azure-devops-2020
Set the Default Capacity for Each Person
From the Sprints in DevOps, you can specify the capacity per person in the Capacity tab. You can also break down the amount of time per person by the type of activity if you desire. In the end, the numbers should add to 1 per person per day.
Here is a good reference on setting capacities for sprints:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/sprints/set-capacity?view=azure-devops

Related

ADO: Analyzing Sprint performance

I am a PO leading a small development team for enhancements to our PeopleSoft Campus Solutions application for a Medical School.
We are using the Sprint functionality in ADO to assign stories from our backlog to the Sprint, create the relevant tasks for each story (mainly development, testing, deployment) and assign the tasks to resources who, in turn, provide effort values (original estimate, remaining, completed). We also make sure our capacity is properly set, with resources OOO time and school holidays configured to get an accurate team and resource capacity. The team updates their effort numbers daily to ensure we are tracking burndown.
While we always start the Sprint with the remaining work hours under team capacity (and the same at the resource level), we have historically left alot of remaining work on the table at the end of the Sprint.
My leadership wants to answer the question "Why was the work left on the table?". Of course, there could be MANY reasons, we underestimated the effort, we were blocked on a task (for example, we can't start the testing task until the development is done), the resource didn't actually have the calculated capacity due to being pulled into other meetings or initiatives, or (and I don't think this is the case) people were just plain lazy.
What reports/analytics can I leverage to help answer this question? Even just seeing a list of remaining tasks per resource with remaining task effort and with a total amount of work remaining per resource overall would be helpful, but I can't seem to find anything.
Any suggestions or guidance is appreciated!
You can use Queries to find the remaining tasks(add column option->Remaining Work) and save the query into Shared Queries.
There is a query results widget in dashboard to display the query in Shared Queries. Do not forget to add Remaining Working in widget.
Remaining Work:
You could refer to the document: Adjust work to fit sprint capacity

Defining an Azure Board query that tracks work I have performed during current sprint - at any given time within that sprint

I am trying to come up with n Azure Board query to return the work I have performed during current sprint - which I am vaguely defining as:
Work In Current Sprint = [A] + [B]
where
A = work items where I completed development stage (or was decided at some point work is irrelevant) and
B = work items I created in current sprint, not necessarily assign to me nor my team (I spent time investigating an issue, and ended up, for instance, finding a bug, so I want this included in this "report").
The closest I could get is the query blow. Problem is it is still not quite accurate, since with regards to items I created during this sprint - I could not find a way to filter created items in this sprint only - results are showing up work items that CURRENTLY BELONG to current sprint, but not necessarily created in current sprint. The only way I see I can achieve what I want is using CreatedBy - but this only provides a "hardcoded" date range offset, at any given time. If I use an offset of 14 days backwards, running query at the last day of the sprint (considering a 2 week sprint duration) should work, but running the query at any day before that, during the sprint, will return stuff created in previous sprints.
I want this query to help me track "work I have performed during current sprint" (as defined above) at any given day within the sprint.
Any better ideas ?
You could use custom date in 'create date' to limit the work item.
And I notice you use 'work items and direct links', then you need set filters for 'Filters for linked work items' part(as you needed, like iteration path etc.). Otherwise it may return linked work item that belong to other iterations, according to the filled filter, like something belows:
I hope it could help.

Increment Planning Query

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.

Use "hours" for estimations in VSTS

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

Google dfp Frequency cap

Hi good day I have a line item that will run for a year but will only have a monthly impression of 50 thousand. How can I set this up on google dfp small business.
The frequency cap is per user we don't want it to be per user. Can someone please advice.
Many thanks
There is one workaround and one option inside DFP to make this work:
Create an order with a single line item with a running time of just one month and your monthly impression goal.
You can then copy this single line item 11x times with it's creatives in to the same order and adjust only the start/-enddate.
The ad unit code, etc. can remain the same in this setup.
If you want to rely on DFP's built in features you can choose a price priority line item, which would allow you to set a daily impression goal. You would need to target this line item type to a special ad unit in order to work. The daily impression goal is of course the amount of impressions you want to serve per month, divided by 30.5.
This can be easily done.
Go to your line item
Go down to "Adjust Delivery"
Tick "Frequency"
In the first field box, add "50,000" to denote your impressions limit and then in the 2nd box, leave it as "1" and then change the default "Day" setting to "Month".
Save
This will allow the line to serve to a limit of 50,000 max per month.