Requirements Management
Backlogs
You can plan and manage your work using the backlogs and boards provided. For an overview of the features available with the three classes of backlogs you can use and two types of boards, see Backlogs, boards, and plans. With list backlogs you can quickly develop your project plan and group and prioritize work. With boards, you can quickly update status and fields displayed for each work item.
You use work items to share information, assign work to team members, track dependencies, organize work, and more.
Create your backlog
Plan your project by adding a work item for each user story or requirement.
Storyboard
Visualize your ideas and user stories and support greater understanding of them by storyboarding them with PowerPoint, also link your storyboards to your backlog work items.
Choose how you want to track bugs
Each team can choose how they want to manage bugs and where they'll show up on the backlogs and boards
.
Organize your backlog
Group items into a hierarchical list using portfolio backlogs and quickly reorder and re-parent items to effectively manage your deliverables.
New work item experience
The new work item experience provides access to a more modern form, additional features, and the ability to add fields and apply other customizations to the work item type.
Track issues and other types of work
Different work item types track different types of work - such as bugs, test cases, risks, issues, and more.
Manage bugs
Capture and triage bugs using a variety of tools.
Link work items
Track related work, dependencies, and changes made over time by linking work items.
Bulk modify, link, change type, move, and delete work items
Drive Git development from a work item
Follow you development processes associated with your work by adding or linking to branches, pull requests, and commits in the Development section.
Discussion
Add or review comments added to a work item. Start by clicking the 
discussion icon.
Bulk modify
Quickly change one or more fields in several work items using bulk modify in the web portal or bulk modify using Excel.
Copy or clone a work item
Copy an existing work item or bulk copy several using Excel.
Change the work item type (Team Services)
Move a work item to another team project (Team Services)
Remove or delete a work item
Remove work items from the backlog by changing their State to Removed. Or, move them to the recycle bin (Team Services) or permanently delete them.
Work item templates
Quickly add new work items based on templates with pre-populate values for your team's commonly used fields.
Rich text comments
Describe and comment on work to perform using formatted text, hyperlinks, and inline images. Click 
or 
to expand or contract the viewing area.
Attachments
Add emails, documents, images, log files, or other file types to support collaboration of work in progress.
Scrum
Scrum teams use sprint backlogs to plan sprints and focus on just the set of work they want to accomplish during a sprint.
Define sprints
Schedule and select your team's sprints to gain access to sprint backlogs and task boards
Plan sprints
Build your sprint backlog, add tasks, and load balance work across your team as you plan your sprint
Track work on your task board
Use your task board during your daily Scrum meetings to view and update progress
Manage resources
Use capacity planning tools to track individual, team, and activity over and under capacity for a sprint
Velocity & forecasting
Use velocity & forecast tools to estimate work that can be completed in future sprints
Sprint burndown charts
Monitor progress and review team patterns from sprint burndown charts
Kanban
Your Kanban board turns your backlog into an interactive signboard, providing a visual flow of work. Each Kanban column represents a work stage, and each card represents a work item. Using the product backlog Kanban board, you can quickly update workflow status by moving items to a downstream column or different swimlane.
Kanban basics
Use your Kanban board to visualize and track the flow of work from idea to completion as well as quickly update work item fields.
Add task checklists
Add and mark tasks as done with lightweight tasks checklists.
Set WIP limits
Set constraints on the amount of work your team undertakes at each work stage to gain access to sprint backlogs and task boards.
Add columns
Customize columns to support your team's workflow and track work from start to finish.
Definition of done
Support your team to be in sync about when to handoff items to a downstream work stage.
Split columns
Turn on split columns to track the lag between when items are done in one state and work actually starts in a new state.
Expedite work
Use swimlanes to track work at different service-level classes.
Customize cards
Add fields to cards that you can edit directly on your Kanban and task boards.
Track
Track and visualize progress using fit-for-purpose tools. You can search the code base, list work items, and set up alerts to get notified when changes that you care about occur.
Search, queries, tags, and filters
Example queries
Find examples to use when constructing your queries.
Work item queries
Open shared queries or create your own query using the query editor to list work items or show hierarchical or dependent items.
Work item search box: find work items based on ID, assignment, changed date, or keyword.
Code search
Search within your code branches (TVC) and repositories (Git) to find files, commits, and more using powerful filters to obtain rich results.
Tags
Add tags to work items to filter backlogs and queries.
Manage risks and dependencies
Link work items to track related work, dependencies, and changes made over time.
History & Auditing
Review and query work item change history to learn of past decisions and support future ones.
Alerts & notifications
Get notified as changes occur to work items, code reviews, source control files, and builds.
Charts and dashboards
Team dashboards provide a centralized location for keeping both the team and stakeholders in sync. Each dashboard tile provides quick access to the progress of builds, status of work items, or latest code changes.
Multiple team dashboards
Each team can create several team dashboards to help keep both the team and stakeholders in sync. Each dashboard tile provides quick access to the progress of builds, status of work items, or latest code changes.
Edit dashboard mode
Add, remove, move, and configure widgets by clicking the Edit dashboard icon. Click the checkmark icon to exit.
| 
Drag-n-drop layout
Configure the layout to your specifications by dragging tiles into the sequence you want.
Widget catalog
Add widgets to your dashboard to provide the information and monitor the data your team needs. Check out the Marketplace for additional widget extensions.
Work item query charts
View the status of work in progress by charting the results of a flat-list query. You can create several types of charts—such as pie, column, or trend—for the same query. Optionally add these charts to a dashboard.
Cumulative flow diagrams
Track the progress of work on your backlogs through the CFD charts.
Work item and test charts
Track status and trends of work items or test progress and test runs. Optionally add these charts to a dashboard.
Capacity planning and tracking
Easily track how much work your team has completed and has left to do in a sprint by adding the sprint capacity chart widget to your dashboard.
Velocity charts
The team velocity chart tracks the total estimated effort (story points or size) of backlog items (user stories or requirements) completed or still in progress within each sprint.
Scale
How do you manage work across the enterprise using Agile tools? How will you scale your Agile tools to support your growing enterprise?
As your organization grows, your tools can grow to support a culture of team autonomy as well as organizational alignment. You can also:
- Add and structure teams and organize work to gain the best of both worlds: team autonomy and organizational alignment. Teams can manage their work independently of one another.
- Manage your team assets and add team administrators.
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Manage a portfolio of backlogs and gain insight into each team's progress as well as the progress of all programs.
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Incrementally adopt practices that scale to create greater rhythm and flow within your organization, engage customers, improve project visibility, and develop a productive workforce.
- Structure team projects to support epics, release trains, and multiple backlogs to support the Scaled Agile Framework.
