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Azure DevOps offers various planning tools suitable for agile project management, so if you are transitioning from traditional project management methods to agile methodologies, Azure DevOps can provide an ideal way of getting started.
Azure DevOps agile planning and portfolio management tools offer quick ways for teams to plan, organize, manage, and track work quickly across their organization.
Features like product/sprint backlogs, task boards, dashboards, and analytics reports enable project teams to track their processes easily from the development cycle to completion. Cisin makes connecting to Azure DevOps easier by offering integrated project and portfolio management functionality within one system.
Azure DevOps
What is Azure DevOps? It is a set of technologies designed to assist software project development teams with tracking work, managing code, performing builds and deployment, testing apps and running tests.
Azure DevOps' well-integrated set of tools makes it perfect for all developer teams - from project inception through finalized code delivery. Azure DevOps can assist developers, project and product managers, and business analysts with their Agile Project Management platform needs; however, it lacks all of the elements of an all-inclusive project management suite.
Best Practices For Agile Management
Azure DevOps' many features and functionalities may seem complex at first, so here are a few key practices you should keep in mind if you're following an agile process:
Configure Your Teams
Each project should assign an initial team. Many features or developments are involved in your project, or to adhere to agile tool approaches, agile teams should be formed based on deliverables.
To optimize agile project management with Azure DevOps further, create sections for each group of developers and assign scrum masters for every scrum master you trust.
Configure Your Sprints
Iteration Paths help teams select project sprints using Iteration Paths, with varying cadences based on length or hierarchy.
Azure Board tools use sprint backlogs, taskboards, forecasts and delivery plans to assign sprints accordingly. Best practices for sprints in agile projects include:
- You are setting an appropriate sprint cadence within your product group.
- We are outlining several iteration plans to prepare for future planning.
- We are planning how teams will use iteration management of backlog items, among other considerations.
Work In Sprints
Sprints allow developer teams to focus on specific tasks at any one time. All work assigned for a sprint appears in its respective sprint backlog - which only exists within product backlogs; portfolio backlogs do not contain sprint backlogs.
Sprint Burn-Down Chart
A sprint burn-down chart makes tracking progress simple, and to evaluate deliverables for sprint planning, consult your team's Sprint Backlog.
Each sprint item is assigned iteratively to members of your team with tasks scheduled to be accomplished during each sprint - keeping an eye on this chart is also recommended.
Consult other teams about any dependencies that could jeopardize your success, and regularly track sprint work items as they move from New to Active to Complete statuses.
Integrate Azure DevOps for maximum success when undertaking agile projects. It helps monitor and manage the status of projects' portfolios, costs, and schedules efficiently and easily. It makes data analysis and reporting for your initiatives simpler, giving you control of tasks, timeframes, and prices associated with them and providing access to all project portfolios' internal data, such as terms, budgets or performance metrics, in one convenient system.
For Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps projects work hand-in-hand to provide suggested time entries and report time on projects while linking schemes allow you to explore tasks completed by users so you can enter accurate time entries for them.
Additional advantages of connecting Azure DevOps projects include one convenient system.
Azure DevOps Portfolio
We provide project portfolio visibility and a 360-degree view of Azure DevOps activity, helping you make smart decisions based on high-level data while easily tracking statuses and deliveries.
We support your project's adherence to agile manifesto principles and SAFe compliance using data-driven SAFe compliance rules. Furthermore, its portfolio management features enable you to view the big picture quickly and make better decisions faster than before.
Features
The following are some of the key features of Azure DevOps project management:
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User Controls: Azure DevOps allows you to integrate with an Azure Active Directory, sync it with on-premise ADs, or invite visitors.
Every user is subject to access rules limiting what they see; once assigned teams, they can review work and access code repository and communicate effectively among themselves; an administrator manages these users for you.
- Azure Visitors: Within your Azure AD, it is possible to invite guests from other organizations to participate by simply inputting their email addresses when adding users and selecting teams.
- Groups/Permissions: Users seeking access to certain functions can join one of the many built-in groups available through the organization settings page under group management; on the project settings page, you can then configure permissions on the said group for that project.
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Teams: Users may be assigned to multiple units that limit what they see when assigned to a team.
However, its focus may change according to a portfolio's project or iteration status.
- Types: Azure DevOps provides both generic and customized templates for Azure DevOps, with four built-in process types such as basic, agile, scrum, and CMMI built right into each board - this way, boards remain subject to their project's process categories while teams do not.
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Backlogs Manage Work Items: Plan goods and features, and structure projects.
A Portfolio Backlog serves as the highest-level backlog.
Issues, product backlog items, and user stories fall under its purview.
At the same time, there's also the Iteration Backlog for each time-scoped iteration, which acts as a task-level list.
These three are essential in Azure DevOps.
- Boards: Boards can help organize and manage tasks by organizing work items onto cards that can be placed onto columns representing their current state on a panel.
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IIteration Paths: Commonly called sprints, allow you to schedule work items at specific intervals.
At the project level, you establish iteration pathways each team can select; you may create flat or hierarchical collections of iteration pathways to accommodate releases, sub releases and sprints.
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Regions: Areas are great tools for organizing work logically into divisions or functional regions and establishing sites for distinct business lines.
In particular, Areas make managing larger projects much more manageable.
- Notifications: Just about every action performed within Azure DevOps can be alerted or declined by team members; work assignments and build success/failure are two common alert triggers.
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Dashboards: With Azure DevOps, it is possible to create dashboards for various objectives.
Their designs change according to team members' demands and work item types, providing greater customization opportunities than conventional solutions.
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Azure Repos: Azure Repository provides developers with version control tools to track coding changes over time, safely merge and test each developer's changes, publish these revisions as changes occur and manage evolutions without them being untracked or compromised.
It offers two methods of version control systems - Team Foundation Version Control and Git.
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Analytics: Azure DevOps provides product owners with several built-in analytics reports, such as control charts, cumulative flow diagrams and burn charts, that are helpful when it comes to identifying workflow trends.
Azure DevOps's visualization features allow a quick way of looking at projects' ongoing progress, while its reporting features enable real-time updates of project progress while managing statuses, evaluating risks, and more - real-time reports could even come straight from Azure DevOps.
Why Use Azure DevOps For Agile Projects?
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Ease Of Use: Agile Azure DevOps initiatives are easy for any PM to manage, with projects starting and adding users in minutes and tasks easily assigned.
Your dashboard provides customizable task parameters and workflows or preloaded templates if you prefer something simpler.
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Better Collaboration: Azure devOps tools were designed to allow the entire team working on similar projects or iterations to seamlessly collaborate, with visibility helping problems to surface sooner.
At the same time, custom reporting features provide more granular data on even minor task item forms.
Team Dashboards collaborate in real-time on similar issues, as they solve problems quicker, communicate more efficiently, and think creatively, resulting in faster solutions and increased creativity.
- Integrations: Azure DevOps is an open-source platform capable of working seamlessly with virtually every function you wish to add - you will likely find an extension available in Azure Marketplace that fits this function.
Conclusion
As a result, you launch one or more projects, form groups, add individuals (users) to operations teams, and assign these users to relevant groups that allow them access to update code quality, authorize builds, change deployment processes or even create and run tests.
Are You Hosting in Azure Infrastructure? Azure DevOps Project Management is sure to be a priority.
Azure DevOps has long been popular for its integrated testing and development capabilities as well as numerous tools created specifically by agile teams for agile teams; its incorporation into your workflow helps increase team collaboration on development activity more smoothly than ever.
