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Azure DevOps Boards provides a centralized hub for planning, tracking, and discussing work across your teams. With built-in support for agile planning, work item tracking, visualization, and reporting, Azure Boards helps you deliver value faster and with higher quality.
The image is an introduction to Azure DevOps Boards, highlighting it as a project management and collaboration tool. It features an illustration of two people interacting with a board filled with notes.
By aggregating all your work in one place, Azure Boards gives you real-time insights into project health, enabling informed decisions and smoother delivery.

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Core Concepts of Azure DevOps Boards

Azure Boards lets you manage diverse work items—tasks, bugs, user stories, and features—in a shared environment so everyone stays aligned on priorities and progress.
The image is an introduction to Azure DevOps Boards, showing a circular diagram with sections for Tasks, Bugs, and User Stories, centered around managing work items. It emphasizes providing a shared understanding.
Core ComponentDescription
Work ItemsCreate, assign, and track anything from tasks to bugs.
BacklogsPrioritized lists of work items that define your roadmap.
SprintsTime-boxed iterations for delivering incremental value.
BoardsVisual Kanban or Scrum boards to monitor workflow.
QueriesCustom searches and filters for reporting and insights.
The image displays five colorful cards labeled with core concepts: Work Items, Backlogs, Sprints, Boards, and Queries. Each card is numbered and includes a simple icon.

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Work Items

Work items are the fundamental units of work in Azure Boards:
  • User Stories: End-user features described in plain language.
  • Bugs: Defects or issues that require a fix.
  • Tasks: Discrete pieces of work tied to backlog items.
  • Features: Higher-level groupings of related stories and tasks.
Effective categorization and clear descriptions ensure your team stays focused and productive.

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Kanban Board

The Kanban Board gives you a dynamic, real-time view of work-in-progress:
  • Customize columns to reflect your workflow stages.
  • Add swimlanes to group by priority, team, or feature.
  • Enforce Work-in-Progress (WIP) limits to avoid bottlenecks.
  • Drag and drop cards to update status instantly.
Setting overly high or low WIP limits can hurt flow. Adjust limits based on historical throughput and team capacity.
The image shows different features of a Kanban board, including an overview, customized columns, swimlanes for categorization, work item progression, and limiting work in progress.

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Sprints and Sprint Planning

Sprints in Azure Boards help teams commit to and deliver a shippable increment each iteration:
  1. Define sprint goals and set start/end dates.
  2. Select backlog items based on team capacity.
  3. Track progress on the Sprint Board in real time.
  4. Review burndown charts and velocity metrics for continuous improvement.
The image is a flowchart titled "Sprint Planning and Execution," showing four stages: defining sprint goals and timeframes, selecting work items from the backlog, tracking progress on the sprint board, and monitoring burn-down and velocity.

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Queries

Use Queries to filter, search, and group work items for reporting or dashboard widgets:
  • Save and share custom queries for recurring needs.
  • Pin query results to project dashboards.
  • Track burndown and cumulative flow trends.
  • Analyze team velocity and forecast upcoming sprints.
The image shows a screenshot of an Azure DevOps interface, specifically the Queries section, with filters set for work items and a message prompting to run the query to see results.

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Best Practices

  • Define and maintain clear workflows aligned to your process.
  • Keep backlogs groomed and prioritized.
  • Establish a regular cadence for sprint reviews and retrospectives.
  • Integrate Azure Boards with Repos, Pipelines, and Test Plans.
  • Leverage dashboards and analytics to monitor health and progress.
Integrating your Boards with CI/CD pipelines and test plans gives you end-to-end traceability from code to release.
The image lists five best practices: establishing clear workflows, promoting collaboration, optimizing backlogs, using dashboards and queries, and leveraging integrations. Each practice is highlighted in a colorful bar.
By adopting these practices, your team will maximize the value of Azure DevOps Boards and accelerate delivery of high-quality software.

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