Treasure Map for Azure DevOps at Scale: Azure Boards
Let’s start our adventure focused on Azure Boards
We start our adventure focused on Azure Boards. Then, when talk about Azure Boards, we can ask ourselves:
- How many teams, squads, tribes do we have in your Azure DevOps?;
- All teams use the same Kanban, Scrum boards?;
- All teams use the same columns and Swimlanes to control their workflow.
Many companies ask these questions because they need to create metrics about their workflows. But how can we create these metrics (example Lead Time and Cycle Time) if each team carries out its process differently.
The answer to this challenge seems quite simple: standardization.
- Process: All teams, squads, boards used the same process template, the same columns and swimlanes;
- Governance: Create controls and reports to ensure this standardization.
- Automation: Create an automation that extract these metrics (teams, squads, boards, columns, swimlanes to verify which teams are not using the established standard.
To help with this challenge, I have a series of reports on GitHub that help with this process:
- How to: Process Templates, Work Item Types, and Fields Mapping on Azure DevOps : Check if all Team Projects use the same process template and fields;
- How to: Team Settings Mapping on Azure DevOps : Check if all teams use the same Backlog Levels, Working Days, and Working with Bugs configurations;
- How to: Board Columns and Swimlanes Mapping on Azure DevOps : Check if all teams use the same Board Columns and Swimlanes on Product Backlog configuration;
- How to: Task Board Customize Columns Mapping on Azure DevOps : Check if all teams use the same columns on Sprint Backlog configuration.
Once all teams are configured the same way, it becomes much easier to create concise metrics and understand our workflow. But we all agree that it is impossible to extract such metrics in large organizations.
Well, this was my first big clue for us to explore the world of Azure DevOps at Scale. See you in the next challenge!!!
