What is Azure DevOps? Learn how to start using Azure DevOps

Introduction

Azure DevOps is a Project management tool to manage the development of a project. It is used for the following purpose for the development of software:

• Project Management tool:
  • Azure DevOps is used as a project management tool to keep track of the progress of  development of a software
  • Built-in wiki to store and share the details of the project with the team
• Source Control tool:
  • Azure DevOps is used as collaborative software development
  • Git repositories for source control of the development code
• Build and Deployment:
  • Azure DevOps is used for managing multiple releases cycle of a project

Registration and creating teams

• Creation of a Project in Azure DevOps

  • We can have multiple projects and handle them with a single login
  • Set the value of version control as Git (This is for the purpose of developers)
  • Set the value of version control as Scrum (This is for the purpose of the analysts and for managing multiple releases)

• Add members to the projects

  • Add a particular person’s email address or a group while creating a project
  • The mentioned people would be notified on their emails
  • We can review the team members and we can add more team members in the settings
  • We can manage the access and the roles, like project administrators, build admins, contributors, stakeholders
  • We can create multiple teams and assign other members to it with their respective roles
  • We can manage permission and accessibilities for each role

• Project configuration

  • Here we manage multiple releases of a project
  • One must be a member of the Project Administration group to access project configuration
  • Steps to be followed for project configuration:
    • Step 1: Click on the “Project configuration”
    • Step 2: Click on “Sprint”
    • Step 3: Create your own iteration (Example: TV2Consulting project)
    • Step 4: Set the start date and End date
      • We can create multiple sprints for one project
    • Step 5: Click on “New child”
    • Step 6: Assign a name to it (Sprint 2)
    • We can create a number of iterations

• Area

  • When we gather some requirements and put it in one folder, we follow the same understanding for Areas in VSTS
  • Steps to be followed to create “Area”:
    • Step 1: Click on “Team Configurations”
    • Step 2: Click on “Create Area” for each team
    • Step 3: Click on “Iterations” and make it available them for the teams
  • Conditions to make an iteration available:
    • Go to settings
    • Assign respective names to each iteration
    • Select all iterations that the team needs
  • Understanding the relations between each element and their validations:
    • Epic:
      • Valid for multiple releases
    • Feature:
      • Valid for multiple sprints
    • User story
      • One sprint
    • Tasks:
      • Valid for one member

Epic

• It is always a good habit to add acronyms for good and easy search result
• Use the same acronym for all the features, Product backlogs, and tasks for good business handle
• The senior BA or the team members assigned with Project administrator have access to create Epics

How to create an Epic of a project:

• Step 1: Click on “Work Items”
• Step 2: Click on “New Work Item”
• Step 3: Select “Epic” from the drop-down
• Step 4: Click on “Title”
  • It is a good habit to mention an abbreviation while creating a task.
  • Example: TALA: Elastic search
• Step 5: Click on “Assigned to”
  • Select the team member from the drop-down menu and the Epic would be assigned to that team member
• Step 6: Click on “Tags”
  • Tags are used for easier search using one keyword
  • We can create tags while creating an Epic
• Step 7: Click on “Area”
  • We can assign a project name under “Area”
• Step 8: Click on “Iteration path”:
  • We can assign the sprint to an Epic
• Step 9: Click on “Description”:
  • We can write details of the Epic
  • This would be an optional field, so if not necessary we can leave it as it is
• Step 10: Click on “Acceptance Criteria”
  • We can mention a necessary condition of the Epic that need to acknowledge other team members
  • Example: “Make sure all requirements are completed”.
• Step 11: Click on “Discussion”
  • We can tag members under the tags and the team members would be notified using (@), they will receive an email.
  • Example: @patrick, please check this out.
• Step 12: Fill all necessary fields under “Details”:
  • Priority: Priority of the Epic
  • Efforts: Efforts need to complete the architecture under the Epic
  • Business values: mention the value area for that Epic
  • Time Criticality: Deadline of the Epic to complete
• Step 13: After filling all the fields we can click on the “Save” button

Features

Path to move to an Epic:

Board -> Backlogs -> Drop-down -> Backlog item -> Select one Epic

To split an Epic into features:

• Step 1: Click on plus (+) icon beside Epic on the board
  • Only Project Admins and Collaborators  can split an Epic into features, no other role has the access to split an Epic
  • Projects created with the Team Configuration as “Scrum” can only view the Epics and create features for the Epics

How to create a Feature:

• Step 1: Click on ‘Boards’
• Step 2: Click on the drop-down “Epic”
• Step 3: Select the item “Feature”
• Step 4: Fill all fields with valid information
  • Title:
    • Provide the title of the feature, recommended to write the abbreviation in the beginning
  • Area path and Iteration path:
    • The Area Path and Iteration path would be the same as the Epic, we can change it accordingly
  • Description:
    • Mention all associated details of the feature
  • Acceptance Criteria:
    • Mention the condition, if any, under this field
    • Example: Tag one member, we can mention the details of the Epic it is related to
  • Details:
    • The field is not mandatory for creating a feature, depending on the organization
  • Effort:
    • Total time of the user stories, under the feature would be the effort of the feature
  • Time Criticality:
    • The defined duration required to complete the work
  • Business Values:
    • The business values can differ depending on the organizations
    • It can be “Business”, “Architecture”.
  • Note: 
    • We can create multiple features for each Epic
    • Requirements that we can complete in one sprint should be created as features
    • Click on the plus icon beside each feature from the board
    • We can create a PBI or a Bug for a feature

Product Backlog

• Product backlogs are the user stories of a project
• Product backlogs would be the requirements that we can complete in one sprint
• We can create multiple tasks for one Product Backlog
• We can use the same acronym used in the Epic, to the title of the product backlog (Recommended to use a common acronym throughout the flow for easy search)
• We can provide a description and other details depending on the organization

How to create a Product Backlog:

• Step 1: Click on “+” sign beside the features on the board
• Step 2: Tags:
  • Add  tags to the product backlogs
• Step 3: Follow:
  • Team members can click on “Follow” so that they will receive all updates for all changes occur in the product backlogs
• Step 4: Attachments:
  • We can attach any document associated with the product backlog
• Step 5: History:
  • We can view the History of the actions performed on the Product Backlog from the creation of the product backlog
• Step 6: Title:
  • Provide the title of the product backlog, recommended to write the abbreviation in the beginning
• Step 7: Area path and Iteration path:
  • The Area Path and Iteration path would be the same as the Feature, we can change it accordingly
• Step 8: Description:
  • Mention all associated details of the product backlogs
• Step 9: Acceptance Criteria:
  • Mention the condition, if any, under this field
  • Example: Tag one member, we can mention the details of the Epic it is related to
• Step 10: Details:
  • The field is not mandatory for creating a product backlog, depending on the organization
• Step 11: Effort:
  • Total time of the user stories, under the product backlog would be the effort of the feature
• Step 12: Time Criticality:
  • The defined duration required to complete the work
• Step 13: Business Values:
  • The business values can differ depending on the organizations
  • It can be “Business”, “Architecture”.

Tasks 

How to create a Task:

• Title:
  • The title of the task should contain a brief understanding of the task
• Assigned To:
  • Here we need to assign the developer’s name
• State:
  • When a task has created the state of the task will be “New”
  • When a developer picks a task, the state will be “In Progress”
  • When a developer completes the task, the state needs to be updated to “Resolved”
  • The developer needs to assign the task to QA to testing and then the QA will update the task to “Done”
• Area:
  • Project name on which the developers are working (for eg. Main\OTT, Main\OTT Monitoring, and Diagnostics)
• Iteration path:
  • In this field, we can mention the sprint name.
• Description:
  • The detailed information of the task needs to be provided in this section
• Remaining work:
  • The remaining work hour should be the same as the original estimate hours while the task is created
  • When the developer completes the task, the remaining work hour should be 0
• Original Estimate:
  • The estimated duration of the task needs be mentioned here, the minimum duration can be 1 hour and the maximum duration can be provided as 18 hours
• Efforts:
  • When a developer starts working on a task, the developer needs to update the efforts
• Dev Testing:
  • The developer needs to mention the hours spent in dev testing of the task
• Platform:
  • While the task is created, the platform to which the task belongs to needs to be mentioned
• Dev Testing Steps:
  • When the developer updates the task to the “Resolved” state, the developer needs to explain the Dev Testing steps.

Miscellaneous features of the User stories

Follow a User Story

• We can tag team members of the project to notify them and keep them updated with the actions performed on the task.
• The tagged team members would be notified via emails

Attachments/ Documents

• We can attach the associated documents to the tasks
• We can attach files to the tasks

History

• We can track the activities performed on each task
• We can know the changes performed on each field along the details of the responsible team member