Azure DevOps, showing tasks instead of stories on my board

Question

I would like to make a board for my team in Azure DevOps that shows only tasks and bugs and allows me to move the cards representing each task or bug between columns for new, active, or closed.

There are two boards that almost do what I want:

• The sprint taskboard. But this groups tasks and bugs horizontally by their parent user story. I do not want that grouping
• The 'board'. But the cards represent bugs and user stories, not tasks.

Other teams in my organisation get around this by using User Stories as tasks. None of their User Stories read 'as an X I want Y so that I can Z' they instead say things like 'optimize runtime of forest layer' which is a task, not a user story. Making that change (eschewing tasks and using user stories to represent tasks instead) enables them to use the board exactly as I would like to, but I am reluctant to get rid of real User Stories as they serve (I think) a useful purpose in reminding us why we are doing the child tasks related to each user story.

How can I configure a board in ADO DevOps that behaves like the current board but at the task instead of the user story level?

Answer 1

There's no such thing as "The Agile Process". Agile is a set of principles for software development. http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html.

Several development methodologies exist that support these principles, including Scrum and Kanban. In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided to implement an "Agile Process" in DevOps in a way that is completely incapable of supporting the way dev teams actually handle the different types of activity in real life: i.e. progress bugs, stories and tasks through a sequence of columns on some representation of a board. In a deeply ironic moment of profound self-unawareness, Microsoft forgot (among other things) about how teams manage Technical Debt.

They succeeded in this endeavour by creating a strict hierarchy of "Work Item Types", which defines Tasks as always subordinate to User Stories or Bugs:

As part of this "Agile Process" they also defined what a board can contain, which, you guessed, is only User Stories and Bugs. So while it is possible to create stand-alone tasks, you can't actually do anything useful with them when you want to work on them. These "unparented tasks" as they are cutely referred to, cannot be progressed independently on an iteration board. Ever.

I have searched the internets diligently for a definition of this "Agile Process" they have implemented. Curiously, the only references I can find are from Microsoft.

It is rumoured that the same people who dreamed up this design were also responsible for this:

Answer 2

Honestly if Task and User Story follow the basic same States and swim lanes in Agile Process, I dont see a point why they both cannot be present in the Taskboard.

This might make sense, if the developer/QA is supposed to work at the Task level, and the Product Owner takes care of moving the User Story. But for someone like me migrating from JIRA to ADO, this is tough to assimilate.

I would recommend, in the "Organization Settings" > "Boards" > "Process" > "Backlog Levels" > "Requirements Backlog" you should let the user pick the already available Work Item Type, instead of mandating them to just create one. Or rather do the same in "Iteration Backlog", so I can track "User Story" along with "Task" (if any) in "Iteration Backlog"

Answer 3

How can I configure a board in ADO DevOps that behaves like the current board but at the task instead of the user story level?

The Boards and Backlogs are for Requirement backlog level work items which is the User Story in Agile process, and the Task work item type is actually the Iteration backlog level.

While the Bug is Iteration backlog like Task by default and can be configured as Requirement backlog which you can refer to Show bugs on backlogs and boards.

In summary, it's not possible to show Task work items directly in the Boards like the User Story work items since the Task is in a lower level.

However, you can show the Bug type work items directly in the Boards just like the User Story by editing the Working with bugs which you can find in the Boards - Settings, choose the first option:

In this case, you can see the Bugs as well as the User Story: