1. Azure Boards:

• It is an interface through which you can manage task, work items, and sprints which helps in agile process of development.
• Also, the drag and drop of card feature enables managing and tracking of work items / task easily.

2. Azure Repos:

• This component enables easy management of project files in a private Git repository.
• It supports features like clone, push, pull and commit by enabling the developer to stay updated with files.
• Also, supports branching features that makes code easily available in any branch without affecting the master code.

3. Azure Pipelines:

• This component combines CI, CD and CT i.e., Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Testing.
• Continuous Integration enables developer and tester to automate the code testing and merging in source.
• Continuous Delivery allows continuous deploy and test the code in multiple environments.
• Continuous Testing automates testing of code in on-premises or in cloud.

4. Azure Artifacts:

• It is an extension through which we can add NuGet, npm and maven packages in Azure DevOps.
• Helps in adding fully integrated packages in CI CD pipelines.

5. Azure Test Plans:

• Enables tester to manually test codes from Kanban board itself.
• Helps to maintain quality and performance of the product.
• Provides rich diagnostic data like screenshot, comments, with annotations.
• Enables users to create bugs, task and test cases within the extension that helps end to end traceability.

Azure Boards:

Azure Boards enables the team to organize their work items and track its progress. We can add/edit the work items and keep the track of its stages. It also provides an interface to log all the bugs encountered during testing process and manage accordingly.

What is work item?

Work items are like GitHub issues. They can track the features and requirements which are being developed, code defects or bugs, and keep tabs on other tasks too.

Work item stages:

• To-do
• Work in progress
• Code review
• Deployment

A work item goes through various stages as mentioned above:

• When an item is created and assigned to the developer, it is said to be in “To- do” stage
• During the development of an item, it is in “work in progress” stage
• After the completion of development task, it is in “code review” stage
• Testing of the item is done and if any modification is required then it will go back to “To-do” stage. If the stage does not need any modification, then it will move to “Deployment” stage.

Boards and Kanban:

Use of Kanban boards provide a visual interactive space for the team to plan and track the progress. A team can see, which work is assigned to whom and, able to see the status of work items defined by its status. Board presents work items as cards which can be easily managed by drag and drop option through section.

As you can see in the above picture, the work item is created with name “My Preference” and assigned to “Prince Kumar” and state is “To-do” which is not started yet.

And just above the recently created work item card, “new item” option is available to create a new work item.

Collaboration:

The discussion section enables collaboration with team members of same project. If something important is tagged along work items, then discussion section can be useful to get views and response on that work item from teams easily.

In the above picture you can see discussion section which can be used to give comments and opinions on the specific work item which is limited to the team members only.

Backlogs:

Backlogs present work item as list where one can see the progress and plan accordingly.

In this view you can see work items as a list with their respective state and types. 

Sprint:

This tool helps in implementing scrum practice and with scrum one can plan and monitor sprint. Scrum method follows iteration path in which a team targets specific amount of task to be completed in certain period, that manage time and avoid deadlines.

In this view you can see all the work items divided into sprints, in above picture currently sprint 3 is selected.

How to use Azure Boards?

• Step 1: Open Azure Boards signup page from the browser
• Step 2: Select from the listed options to sign in start free or start free with GitHub

Start free: choose this option if you have existing Microsoft account and signup by filling details.

Start free with GitHub: choose this option if you have existing GitHub account and sign up by filling the details.

• Step 3: After signing in, fill up the details such as Azure DevOps organization name and location then click on continue.

 

• Step 4: Create a project.

• Step 5: Add work items.