Microsoft Azure Boards for agile teams

1. What is Microsoft Azure Boards?
2. Can Azure Boards be used to manage my agile team’s Backlog?
3. How can I manage my product or project with Azure Boards and DevOps?
4. Communication through Azure Boards
5. What are Azure Workitems and what types are there?
6. How can I create and manage Sprints / Iterations?
7. How can I connect Microsoft Teams with Azure Boards and DevOps?
8.How can I create custom Dashboards?
9. Conclusions about Microsoft Azure Boards
10. Bibliography

What is Microsoft Azure Boards?

Source: https://azure.microsoft.com/

Microsoft Azure Boards is the ideal tool for teams looking for an agile and efficient solution for product or project management. With its fast and intuitive web-based interface, Azure Boards facilitates planning, tracking, and analyzing work throughout the development cycle. Its customizable platform adapts to the specific needs of each team, enabling effective collaboration and workflow optimization..

Can Azure Boards be used to manage my agile team’s Backlog?

Yes, Azure Boards can be used to manage the backlog of agile teams. The tool can help you with the following advantages:

Visual Organization: Azure Boards offers Kanban board views, allowing teams to visualize workflow and task status in real-time.
Dynamic Prioritization: Easily reorder and prioritize tasks, ensuring the team focuses on the most important backlog items.
Integration with Agile Methodologies: Compatible with Scrum, Kanban, SAFe (Scaled Agile), and other agile methodologies or frameworks. Azure Boards facilitates sprint or iteration planning and user story management.
Enhanced Collaboration: Team members can comment and share updates on work items, improving communication and collaboration. Custom notifications can be created to stay updated on new developments.
Customization: Processes and workflows can be customized to meet the specific needs of the team, allowing for backlog management more aligned with project goals.
Reports and Analysis: Azure Boards provides detailed reports and analysis capabilities to help teams understand progress and make data-driven decisions.

How can I manage my product or project with Azure Boards and DevOps?

Azure Boards allows you to select different processes as templates. These processes incorporate different workflows and types of work items that enable personalized work with your team.

The following diagram, analogous to the SAFe (Scaled Agile) framework, shows how a Kanban board can be structured using the following hierarchical elements:

Source: Microsoft.com

As shown, it is possible to have the main types of elements (Epics, Features, User Stories, etc.) from frameworks like SAFe:

Source: https://scaledagileframework.com/

It is also possible to create custom work items to cover the needs of the product or client, or the framework or methodology itself.

Work items are customizable and allow the creation of custom fields. The following image illustrates a user story form:

Source: Microsoft.com

Communication through Azure Boards

Communication is one of the great advantages of Azure Boards. The entire communication process of the different activities can be traced in the various work items, including images, attachments, and rich text.

Source: Microsoft.com

Mentioning other users can send them a notification and email to inform them.

It is also possible to create custom notifications for different scenarios. For example, when a work item is in a certain state or column on the board, a specific person receives a notification. This is very useful, for example, for QA process intervention.

Source: dev.azure.com y Gmail.com de equipo real.

All these tools facilitate work in any combination of team types, whether remote, hybrid, on-site, or 100% remote.

What are Azure Work Items and what types are there?

Work items are containers of information used to break down and organize the different team activities and product features. In the “Agile” process, the following are highlighted:

Epic: A significant initiative for solution development.
Feature: Represents a solution functionality that provides business value, meets stakeholder needs, and is sized to be delivered over sprints or iterations.
User Story: Brief descriptions of a small part of the desired functionality (features) written from the user’s perspective.
Task: Practical divisions of user stories or bugs.
Bug: Functional errors or deficiencies.
- The hierarchy of bugs is customizable, being at the same level or one below user stories.
- It is also possible to create new custom work item types and add them to the team’s process, with their own fields and rules.

How can I create and manage Sprints / Iterations?

Azure also refers to Sprints as “Iterations.” It is possible to determine the nomenclature and duration of each iteration and assign it to different Azure Boards projects.

From the “Sprints” view, it is possible to obtain analytical graphs to see their evolution, such as the “Burndown” chart. This chart is a useful progress visualization tool for Agile teams, showing the trend towards meeting the Sprint goal.

Source: dev.azure.com

How can I connect Microsoft Teams with Azure Boards and DevOps?

It is possible to integrate Azure Boards / DevOps with Microsoft Teams. From code publication notifications to views of dashboards or the Kanban board:

Source: Microsoft Teams.

How can I create custom Dashboards?

Azure Boards allows the creation of custom dashboards that can include all the necessary information about the team and product.

There is a wide variety of widgets that can be customized in size, styles, and information. This information can come directly from the backlog and the team, as well as from custom queries.

These queries are especially useful for having lists to complete graphs, tables, or total element or story point counters.

These widgets can also link to different panels and custom queries, serving as a starting point not only for the Product Manager / Owner and Scrum Master but for all team members.

Source: dev.azure.com

Conclusions about Microsoft Azure Boards

Azure Boards is a great product for managing your projects or products and agile teams. Its access through Microsoft’s Active Directory facilitates quick and easy integration of both internal and external company members.

It can be used as an alternative to other popular programs like Jira, Asana, Redmine, or Taiga.

Additionally, it has a Marketplace with hundreds of extensions that can be added to different teams to further expand its customization.