Azure DevOps Epic Feature: Best Practices for Planning and Tracking

Planning and tracking are crucial aspects of any project, and Azure DevOps makes it easy to do so with its Epic feature. An Epic in Azure DevOps is a high-level feature that captures a large body of work that can be broken down into smaller tasks.

To create a successful Epic, it's essential to have a clear understanding of what it entails. An Epic should be a high-level description of the work to be done, not a detailed plan. This allows for flexibility and adaptability as the project unfolds.

Breaking down an Epic into smaller, manageable tasks is key to successful project planning. In Azure DevOps, this can be achieved by creating a hierarchy of tasks, starting with the Epic, followed by Features, and then User Stories or Tasks.

By following these best practices, you can ensure that your Epics are well-planned and easily trackable, making it easier to manage your project and collaborate with your team.

Intriguing read: Epic on Azure

A feature is a significant piece of functionality that delivers value to the user. It usually includes several user stories or backlog items.

A feature might take one or more sprints to complete. This is because features are typically made up of multiple user stories or backlog items, which can be estimated to take a certain amount of time to complete.

To determine the scope of a feature, you can use User Stories and attribute them to the feature in the Product Backlog. This will help you understand the scope and estimate the work required to complete the feature.

You can also add details to a feature, such as the area of customer value it addresses, a relative estimate of the amount of work required, and a priority that captures the relative value compared to other items of the same type.

Here's a summary of the key characteristics of a feature:

Populating your Product Backlog is a crucial step in Azure DevOps.

You'll work with your Product Owner during Sprint 0 to catalog the Features you want to deliver. These Features should roll up into Epics, also known as Themes, which are the highest level of articulation of delivery.

To add Features and Epics to your backlog, select New Work Item and enter a title. Then, select Enter or Add to top. You can repeat this process to capture all your ideas as work items.

You can add Epics in the same way as Features. Open the Epics backlog from the backlogs selector to do so.

To add details to a Feature or Epic, open the item by double-clicking or highlighting it and selecting Enter. Then, add the information you want to track, such as the area of customer value addressed, relative estimate of work required, priority, and business value.

Here are the different areas of customer value you can track:

Remember, Epics are large bodies of work that can be broken down into smaller stories or Issues. They often encompass multiple teams, projects, and boards.

You can add work items to your board by choosing New item and selecting the stories you want to track. The system will automatically assign a work item ID to the user story.

Additional reading: Azure Devops User Stories

An epic is a large body of work that can be broken down into smaller stories, or sometimes called “Issues” in Jira. It often encompasses multiple teams, on multiple projects, and can even be tracked on multiple boards.

Epics are almost always delivered over a set of sprints, and as a team learns more about an epic through development and customer feedback, user stories will be added and removed as necessary.

A product roadmap is a plan of action for how a product or solution will evolve over time, and a theme is an organization goal that drives the creation of epics and initiatives.

Here's a breakdown of how epics relate to other agile structures:

A set of completed epics drives a specific initiative, which keeps the overall product developing and evolving with market and customer demands on top of organizational themes.

Burndown charts can be used to visualize epics, and serve to keep teams motivated and the executive stakeholders informed.

Epics are not the absolute foundation of an agile program, but they are the practical drivers for most agile and DevOps teams.

User Stories and Work Items are essential components of Azure DevOps, and understanding how they work together is crucial for success.

User Stories are system requirements often expressed as "persona + need + purpose." They drive agile programs and help teams implement Features.

To create User Stories, you work with the Product Owner and implementation team to define them in the Product Backlog. Each User Story should be correlated to a Feature, and effort estimations can help determine how big the Feature set will be.

You can add User Stories to your board by choosing New item and selecting the stories you want to track. The system assigns a work item ID to the user story, and you can add as many user stories as you need.

Here's a quick rundown of how to add work items to your board:

User Stories can be broken down into smaller units of work, such as Features or Epics. This breakdown process allows teams to define clear objectives and prioritize work items based on their importance and impact.

By understanding how User Stories and Work Items work together, you can create a more effective and efficient development process.

A fresh viewpoint: Azure Devops Remove User

In the Azure DevOps hierarchy, Epics serve as top-level containers, facilitating the organization and management of work items. They represent significant bodies of work that can be broken down into smaller, more manageable units.

Epics can be used to aggregate related Epics across different projects or teams, enabling stakeholders to gain insights into the overall portfolio of work and make informed decisions about resource allocation and prioritization. This is especially useful for organizations managing multiple projects simultaneously.

By explicitly defining and tracking dependencies between Epics, teams can identify potential bottlenecks or risks early in the development process and take proactive measures to mitigate them. This is known as Dependency Management.

To effectively manage Epics within Azure DevOps, consider the following best practices:

Epics can also serve as the basis for release planning, with each Epic representing a potential release or milestone in the project timeline. By estimating the effort required for each Epic and prioritizing them based on business value and dependencies, teams can create a roadmap for delivering value to customers incrementally.

Intriguing read: Azure Release Pipeline

To effectively manage Epics within Azure DevOps, it's essential to have a clear definition of each Epic. This should include the scope, objectives, and expected outcomes to provide clarity and direction to the team.

Clear definitions help ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards common goals. Prioritize Epics based on their strategic importance and potential business value to allocate resources effectively.

Foster collaboration and communication among team members and stakeholders involved in Epic planning and execution. Regularly review and update Epics to reflect changing requirements, priorities, or market conditions.

Here are the best practices for managing Epics within Azure DevOps in a concise list:

To effectively manage your projects, it's essential to have clear definitions of your Epics. Ensure that Epics are well-defined and aligned with the overall project goals, clearly articulating the scope, objectives, and expected outcomes of each Epic.

Prioritization is key to allocating resources effectively. Prioritize Epics based on their strategic importance and potential business value to ensure that the most critical initiatives receive the necessary attention and focus.

Collaboration is crucial for successful Epic planning and execution. Foster collaboration and communication among team members and stakeholders involved in Epic planning and execution to ensure that everyone is working towards common goals.

Regular review and update of Epics are necessary to reflect changing requirements, priorities, or market conditions. Conducting regular retrospectives and lessons learned sessions helps identify areas for improvement and ensures that Epics remain relevant and aligned with evolving business needs.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

When working on a project, having a clear Roadmap is crucial for success. Microsoft 365 Project offers the capability of building Roadmaps and Timeline (Gantt) views.

To create a Roadmap, you can connect to the Azure DevOps server from Microsoft Project 365 to import User Stories. Importing all User Stories at once can be overwhelming, and it's recommended to track them at the Feature level for better business communication.

The Roadmap view allows you to visualize your project's progress and make adjustments as needed.

You might like: Azure Devops Roadmap

You can keep your outside stakeholders engaged in the product life cycle without attending all Scrum ceremonies using the "Feature timeline and Epic Roadmap" plugin, available for free on the Microsoft Marketplace.

This plugin should be an out-of-the-box feature, but it's a great example of how Azure DevOps can be customized to fit your needs.

To plan feature delivery within or across sprints, navigate to Boards –> Backlogs, Team Backlog, and select “Feature Timeline”.

Take a look at this: Azure App Config Feature Flag

Planning your sprint deliveries is a crucial step in ensuring you meet your project goals. Within Azure DevOps, you can plan feature delivery within or across sprints by using the Boards –> Backlogs, Team Backlog, and selecting the "Feature Timeline".

To start, all sprints are displayed as columns horizontally across the top of the chart, with an indicator of the current sprint. The left side shows Epics, with rows representing Features within the Epics.

Selecting the "Plan Features" box reveals a column of unplanned Features to the right of the screen. To plan a Feature, simply drop and drag it from the list of unplanned Features into one of the defined Sprints.

A different take: Azure Devops Features

Once a Feature is planned, deselect "Plan Features" and select the "Info" icon on the planned Feature. This will open a Feature dialog box with all the User Stories associated with the Feature.

In this view, you can drop and drag User Stories from the "Backlog" column to any of the Sprint buckets. Note that Features may span multiple sprints, but User Stories cannot within this Feature planning view of Azure DevOps.

To define the Start Iteration and End Iteration for each feature, simply select the planned Feature and enter the relevant dates. This will show how Features span multiple sprints and provide an estimation of when the Feature work will conclude.

Here's a quick rundown of the key steps:

Azure DevOps offers a feature timeline and epic roadmap plugin, available for free through the Microsoft Marketplace. This plugin can be installed in an enterprise environment to keep stakeholders engaged in the product life cycle.

The plugin is a result of research and installation, suggesting that it may not be an out-of-the-box feature. Microsoft DevLabs made this plugin available, but its association with it seems to be somewhat distant.

Azure DevOps provides the necessary visuals to keep stakeholders engaged, and the feature timeline and epic roadmap plugin is a valuable tool for this purpose.