Changing Columns on a VSTS Sprint Board

It's very easy to add columns to a Product Backlog Board in VSTS - you can use the board settings to create new columns, rename and re-order, or even remove columns from the board.  The only special columns are the first and the last one, which can't be removed or deleted since they have a special meaning as far as work goes - they represent the start and end state of the work you're managing.


It's more tricky to add columns to a sprint view, though - but this is really useful as it lets you customize the tool to your own workflow and preferences.  You have to be an administrator for the VSTS installation to do this, though - I'll show you how using one of my demo projects.

Use the main config menu (the cog wheel) and click on the Process from the Overview tab:

My project is an "Agile" project – it uses the Agile template.  From Process you can clone your current process and make your own.  Unfortunately you can't change the process type between the 3 original processes so if your project is "Scrum" or whatever, make sure you clone that type.  I made an MyAgile process:


If you click on your new process type, you can see all of the Issue Types associated with it.  

I want to change Tasks, so click on that then go to the States tab.  I added a Triaging and Development state under "In Progress" - that means if a Task is moved into Development, it will show up in that column and will also be "In Progress" as far as VSTS is concerned.  This mapping is really powerful, and lets you really customize your workflow while still being compatible with the VSTS reports, queries and burn downs.  Unfortunately you can't re-order columns, nor change the title of existing tasks - so I had to disable the old Active state:


Now jump back to the Processes screen and configure your project to use the new MyAgile process:

Now take a look back at one of your sprint boards, and you'll see the new columns:

Hope this helps you configure VSTS to work how you want it to!




Location: Titirangi, Auckland 0604, New Zealand

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feature Toggles on a .Net Core API

This is my second tutorial on feature toggling.  You can read the first here . There are many languages and frameworks to choose from when it comes to back ends - I wanted to make a REST service to deliver all of the Time Entries to my Angular application, and almost every language available has REST server capabilities.  I chose to use .Net Core (C#) and Java for my example app.  My background is in Java, and I was really interested to see how .Net Core works.  If you don't know, .Net Core is Microsoft's cross platform offering - it has the Windows-specific parts taken out and runs on Docker. Linux, MacOSX, and of course Windows too.  It can also be compiled on other platforms too, which is very handy. Today I'll be setting up LaunchDarkly using the .Net libraries - I'll do the Java version later on.  LaunchDarkly provides some samples  to help you get started, but I wanted to change a few things.  Just like I did in the Angular front end, I ...
Keep reading

Setup a Kubernetes Cluster on Azure

Image
Photo by  Joseph Barrientos  on  Unsplash I finally received my copy of Kubernetes: Up and Running by Kelsey Hightower  (put on pre-order more than a year ago!), and want to set up a Kubernetes cluster to experiment with.  I'm going to use Microsoft's Azure Container Service, but I want to set this up programmatically.  This will let me set up and tear down the cluster whenever I want to, and make sure that it's configuration doesn't drift over time.  This gives me confidence that I can recreate the cluster in exactly the same way later on, if I need to - if I want to move to a different region or resource group or whatever.  This also fits with the DevOps Infrastructure As Code philosophy, allowing you to check your resource scripts into source control and treat them the same as the code that's running on them. There are a couple of prerequisites I need to set up before I get started.  Firstly - I've just talked about versioning the ...
Keep reading

Automatically Logging PowerShell in to Azure

Image
I've been working with Azure Resource Manager templates a lot lately, as an easy, repeatable way to create deployment environments for my code.  ARM templates are a JSON description of a resource or grouping of resources and can be applied to create or update an environment.  This means you can roll out a new environment quickly and easily - perfect for quickly setting up a Dev or Test system, and you know that if you use the same templates to configure Production you won't have any surprises, or "Well, it worked in Dev..." conversations. The best thing about ARM templates for me is how easy it is to generate them.  If you have a resource group, you can create a template by clicking on the Automation Script button: This will create a show you a JSON template and supporting files that can be downloaded as a Zip.  It contains all the information needed to reproduce your resource group's infrastructure.  It isn't a backup though - it doesn't have the we...
Keep reading