
Azure DevOps Portfolio Plans offer a centralized platform for managing multiple projects and portfolios, allowing teams to prioritize and optimize their work.
By using Portfolio Plans, teams can streamline their project management and make data-driven decisions, thanks to real-time visibility into project performance and resource allocation.
Portfolio Plans provide a single source of truth for project information, eliminating the need for multiple spreadsheets and reducing errors.
This enables teams to focus on delivering value to customers rather than managing administrative tasks.
Explore further: Azure Devops Delivery Plans
What Is Azure DevOps Portfolio Plans?
Azure DevOps Portfolio Plans allow you to organize and prioritize multiple projects into a single, unified plan.
This plan enables you to manage dependencies, resources, and timelines across projects, making it easier to achieve strategic goals.
Portfolio plans are built on top of Azure Boards, which provides a flexible and scalable platform for managing work.
Azure Boards allows you to create and manage multiple boards, each representing a project or a portfolio of projects.
Take a look at this: Azure Savings Plans
Portfolio plans are designed to help you prioritize and allocate resources across projects, ensuring that you're working on the most important initiatives first.
By using portfolio plans, you can create a visual representation of your entire portfolio, including projects, features, and epics.
This visual representation helps you identify dependencies, resource conflicts, and potential roadblocks.
Portfolio plans also enable you to track key metrics, such as project velocity, cycle time, and lead time.
These metrics provide valuable insights into project performance and help you make data-driven decisions.
Portfolio plans are accessible through the Azure DevOps web portal, as well as through the Azure DevOps mobile app.
This means you can access and manage your portfolio plans from anywhere, at any time.
Take a look at this: Azure Devops Metrics
Features and Functionality
You can keep your agile teams working in Azure DevOps while providing portfolio and program leaders a broad view of the project portfolio with OnePlan. This unified solution bridges gaps that impact productivity and the bottom line.
Portfolio teams work from their Features backlog and define the features that support the Epics they are tasked with delivering. They can add Features with values for description, iteration, priority, business value, value area, risk, and time criticality.
To map each Feature to its parent Epic, you can drag the feature on the backlog to its parent Epic on the Mapping menu. You can also move features to certain iterations by dragging them to the respective PIs from the planning menu.
Here's a quick rundown of the process:
- Open the Program team's backlog by choosing Program team from the drop down list on the Backlog tab.
- Choose the icon for view options and select Mapping to map the features to the Epics created by the portfolio team.
How Does It Look?
Let's take a closer look at how Azure Boards presents its features and functionality.
Portfolio in Azure Boards offers visibility into the work performed by multiple agile-featured teams.
You can set your vision, plan, and goals for each release, monitor project progress, and manage risks and dependencies.
High-level objectives can be defined as Epics or Features.
Feature teams can further prioritize and create necessary user stories to simplify their workflow.
This level of organization and planning makes it easier to manage complex projects.
Worth a look: Azure Devops Features
Key Features
OnePlan connects with Azure DevOps, allowing agile teams to work in the tool they're familiar with while providing portfolio and program leaders a broad view of the project portfolio.
This unified solution bridges the gaps that impact productivity and the bottom line.
Connecting OnePlan with Azure DevOps drives enhanced visibility and alignment, making sure the projects teams are working on are the right ones and deliver value to the organization.
Project Management
Project Management is a crucial aspect of Azure DevOps Portfolio Plans. You can use Delivery Plans to drive cross-team visibility and alignment by tracking work status on an iteration-based calendar.
Delivery Plans provide a multi-team view of your project schedule, allowing you to see the work many teams have planned for the next 3 sprints. This makes it easy to discuss priorities and dependencies.
To create a Delivery Plan, go to the Plans menu item under Boards, choose New Plan, and fill in the form with name, description, and specify the team backlog that you want to appear within the plan.
Additional reading: Azure App Service Plans
You can also use the Feature Timeline tool to provide another view into progress of deliverables. This is especially useful for teams that need to see the bigger picture.
Here are some key benefits of using Azure DevOps for project management:
- Enhanced Project Visibility: Gain a holistic view of software development projects and their status within the broader project management landscape.
- Streamlined Processes: Automate the flow of information between project management and development teams, reducing manual work and potential for error.
- Improved Collaboration: Enable seamless communication between teams, ensuring that everyone is aligned on project goals and progress.
- Better Resource Allocation: Optimize the allocation of resources by providing clear insights into development needs and timelines.
- Increased Flexibility: Allow teams to use their preferred tools while ensuring data coherence and alignment on project objectives.
Agile Management
Agile teams can align to strategy by connecting epics, features, and business objectives in Azure Boards.
Azure Boards offer powerful reporting to drive data-driven decision-making and approval of work.
You can track dependencies across teams by linking work items using the Related link type or Predecessor/Successor link types.
To assign work from a common backlog, teams can take ownership of their backlogs and assign items to specific teams by setting the feature team Area Path.
You can see all the Epics portfolio backlogs in Azure Boards, allowing you to view items and features from different teams in one place.
Here are some key features of Azure Boards for Agile Management:
- Powerful reporting
- Ideation
- Scoring and ranking
- Streamline work
To visualize team backlog ownership and progress, you can show parent items, use queries, and utilize Plans in Azure Boards.
You can add more than three backlog levels in Azure Boards, allowing you to create custom backlogs or boards as your process needs.
To view feature progress, you can link its requirements, add a rollup column, or view the Feature Timeline.
Delivery Plans provide a multi-team view of your project schedule, allowing you to discuss priorities and dependencies across teams.
For your interest: Azure Devops Epic Feature
Budget Planning
Accurate key performance metrics are essential to stay on track with your project's financials, budgets, and ROI. This involves measuring financials and providing visibility into a centralized organization-wide view of portfolio financials.
Having a clear view of your financials helps you make informed decisions and adjust your plans accordingly. This can be achieved through OnePlan's financial management capabilities, which allow you to forecast and track costs from start to finish.
Forecasting costs is crucial in project management, and OnePlan's capabilities enable you to understand the cost of future initiatives. This helps you track actuals against all portfolios and programs to plan more accurately with every initiative.
Creating reports that drive decision making is also a key aspect of budget planning. With OnePlan, you can create reports that keep your work in line with forecasts and planned costs, ensuring that your project stays on track and within budget.
Integration and Customization
Azure DevOps offers a range of integration options to streamline your workflow. You can integrate it with Planview Hub, which provides scalable integrations with your toolchain to remove manual efforts and overhead.
Planview Hub is 4x faster to set up and 10x easier to maintain and scale than any other integration solution out there.
Azure DevOps can also be integrated with Jira, allowing your teams to leverage Jira's issue-tracking and planning capabilities alongside Azure DevOps' development tools. This integration eliminates data duplication or swivel-chairing between tools, saving time for your engineers.
Here are some benefits of integrating Jira and Azure DevOps:
- Save time for your engineers: Eliminate data duplication or swivel-chairing between tools
- Improve data accuracy and quality: Avoid human error and poor data fidelity
- Boost collaboration: Get updates and exchange comments instantly
- Centralize visibility for managers: Easily see the status of work from a single location
- Automate traceability: Sit back and let the integration insert backlinks for seamless audits
- Provide more autonomy: Allow each development team to use the tool that best meets their needs
Additionally, Azure DevOps can be integrated with AdaptiveWork, offering key benefits to streamline project management and development. This integration enhances project visibility, streamlines processes, and improves collaboration between teams.
Some of the benefits of integrating AdaptiveWork with Azure DevOps include:
- Enhanced Project Visibility: Gain a holistic view of software development projects and their status within the broader project management landscape.
- Streamlined Processes: Automate the flow of information between project management and development teams, reducing manual work and potential for error.
- Improved Collaboration: Enable seamless communication between teams, ensuring that everyone is aligned on project goals and progress.
- Better Resource Allocation: Optimize the allocation of resources by providing clear insights into development needs and timelines.
- Increased Flexibility: Allow teams to use their preferred tools while ensuring data coherence and alignment on project objectives.
Azure Boards also allows for customization, making it easy to design Kanban boards, taskboards, and delivery plans. You can customize card designs, swim lanes, available fields, and more using Kanban boards, and configure the complete hub using a shared dialog.
Here's an interesting read: Azure Devops Kanban
Benefits and Why Choose
Integrating Azure DevOps with portfolios ensures seamless project management and software development processes, bridging the gap between agile planning and portfolio management.
By integrating AdaptiveWork with Azure DevOps, you can gain a holistic view of software development projects and their status within the broader project management landscape. This is crucial for organizations seeking to align their development projects with strategic business objectives.
You can automate the flow of information between project management and development teams, reducing manual work and potential for error. This streamlines processes and enables seamless communication between teams, ensuring everyone is aligned on project goals and progress.
Here are some key benefits of integrating AdaptiveWork with Azure DevOps:
- Enhanced Project Visibility: Gain a holistic view of software development projects and their status.
- Streamlined Processes: Automate the flow of information between project management and development teams.
- Improved Collaboration: Enable seamless communication between teams.
- Better Resource Allocation: Optimize the allocation of resources by providing clear insights into development needs and timelines.
- Increased Flexibility: Allow teams to use their preferred tools while ensuring data coherence and alignment on project objectives.
Why Agileplace?
Agileplace is a powerful tool for visual tracking, allowing Product Managers to keep tabs on project progress and stay on top of requirements.
Product Managers find their visual tracking needs met in AgilePlace, which is a key benefit of using the tool.
With AgilePlace, teams can ensure all requirements are being met and managers can keep track of up-to-date status' to effectively manage deliverables.
This integration with Azure DevOps enables developers to translate workflow into epics or stories, streamlining project management and collaboration.
Overall, Agileplace offers a flexible and effective solution for project management, helping teams to work together seamlessly from strategy to delivery.
Why?
Integrating Azure DevOps with Portfolios is essential for organizations that want to align their development projects with strategic business objectives.
This integration ensures seamless project management and software development processes by bridging the gap between agile planning and portfolio management.
It helps organizations ensure that every code commit and sprint contributes towards overarching goals.
By integrating Azure DevOps with Portfolios, organizations can make data-driven decisions to prioritize projects that align with their business objectives.
This integration is vital for organizations seeking to streamline their project management and development processes.
If this caught your attention, see: Azure Devops Organizations
Why UiPath?
UiPath is a game-changer for automation teams, allowing for the synchronization of automation items and immediate updates within seconds. This ensures that everyone is on the same page, with access to the latest information.
You can forget about tedious manual updates and focus on more important tasks, like planning and tracking defects. Integration with Azure DevOps takes care of the rest.
UiPath streamlines collaboration across multiple systems and departments, maintaining traceability of requirements and tests. This is a huge time-saver, especially in large organizations.
By choosing UiPath, you'll experience seamless integration with tools like Azure DevOps, making it easier to manage your automation efforts.
Why Adaptive Work?
AdaptiveWork offers a powerful solution for project management and development teams, allowing them to bridge the gap between project management and software development.
By integrating AdaptiveWork with Azure DevOps, teams can synchronize tasks and projects between the two platforms, ensuring that software development efforts are fully aligned with project management objectives.
This integration provides key benefits to streamline project management and development, including enhanced project visibility, streamlined processes, improved collaboration, better resource allocation, and increased flexibility.
Here are the benefits of AdaptiveWork integration in more detail:
- Enhanced Project Visibility: Gain a holistic view of software development projects and their status within the broader project management landscape.
- Streamlined Processes: Automate the flow of information between project management and development teams, reducing manual work and potential for error.
- Improved Collaboration: Enable seamless communication between teams, ensuring that everyone is aligned on project goals and progress.
- Better Resource Allocation: Optimize the allocation of resources by providing clear insights into development needs and timelines.
- Increased Flexibility: Allow teams to use their preferred tools while ensuring data coherence and alignment on project objectives.
By leveraging the strengths of both AdaptiveWork and Azure DevOps, teams can drive efficiency and success in their project management and development workflows.
Sources
- https://ppm.express/blog/how-to-build-portfolio-management-with-azure-devops-boards/
- https://oneplan.ai/products/azure-devops/
- https://www.prajeeshprathap.com/post/how-to-use-azure-devops-with-safe-plan-track
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/plans/portfolio-management
- https://www.planview.com/products-solutions/products/hub/integrations/microsoft-azure-devops/
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