Create your backlog in Azure Boards

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022 - Azure DevOps Server 2019

The product backlog is your project plan, which shows what your team intends to deliver. It contains user stories, backlog items, or requirements that you add to it. Your backlog is a flat list of work items, as the following image illustrates, which shows a Scrum process for Azure Boards. For the Agile, Basic, and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) process models, the Backlog items selection appears as Stories, Issues, and Requirements.

Note

For more information, see the following articles:

• Use backlogs to manage projects
• Configure and customize Azure Boards
• Create a project using the process of your choice
• Customize your work tracking experience
• Create and manage inherited processes

Prerequisites

• Project access: Be a project member.
• Permissions:
  • Be a member of the Contributors or Project Administrators security group.
  • To view or modify work items, have your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions set to Allow. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set to Allow. For more information, see Set work tracking permissions.
• Access levels: To add or modify work items, have at least Basic access. Users with Stakeholder access for public projects have full access to backlog and board features, like users with Basic access. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
• Defined iterations: To use the Planning pane, ensure your team administrator defined iteration (sprint) paths and configure team iterations.

Add a backlog

If you have a project, you have a backlog. Your backlog contains a list of features and requirements that you want to build, ordered by priority. By default, each project has a team and a set of backlogs for that team. You can add more backlogs if you need to support more teams. When you create a new team, you also create various team assets that a team admin can customize to suit the team's workflow. To add a set of backlogs to support a new team, see Create or add a team.

Each team's set of backlogs is associated with one or more work item types. The work item type associated with a backlog depends on the process selected at project creation, team configurations, and process customizations.

The backlogs defined for each default process are:

• Agile: Stories, Features, and Epics
• Basic: Issues and Epics
• Scrum: Backlog items, Features, and Epics
• CMMI: Requirements, Features, and Epics

To customize your backlogs with custom work item types, add portfolio backlogs, or other supported options, see Inherited process model or On-premises XML process model.

Open your backlog

From your web browser, do the following steps to open your product backlog.

1. Sign in to your project (https://dev.azure.com/{Your_Organization}/{Your_Project}).

2. Select Boards > Backlogs.

   

   To select a different backlog, choose a different team or select the View Backlog directory option. You can also enter a keyword in the search box to filter the team backlogs for the project.

   

   Tip

   Choose the star icon to favorite a team backlog. Favorited artifacts ( favorited icon) appear at the top of the team selector list.

3. Check that you selected Stories (for Agile), Issues (for Basic), Backlog items (for Scrum), or Requirements (for CMMI) as the backlog level.

   

4. (Optional) To select which columns display and in what order, select the actions icon and Column options. For more information, see Change column options.

   

Tip

Each team member has several tools to configure their backlog view: Expand/Collapse one level, Column Options, Backlog level selector, View options, and Filter toolbar. Options set for each backlog level are distinct and persist until changed. For more information, see Configure your backlog view.

Track bugs on your backlog

Some teams like to track bugs along with requirements on the backlog. Other teams like to track bugs as tasks completed in support of a requirement, so bugs appear on their Taskboard. Before you determine how to manage bugs, see Bugs as requirements or tasks and Show bugs on backlogs and boards.

Convert ideas into backlog items

Your backlog shows work that you plan to do or that's in progress. As soon as the State of a work item is set to Done or Completed, the work item doesn't appear on your backlog. You can use the backlog controls to filter or change your view.

If you already defined a long list of items, you don't have to reenter them one at a time. Instead, use bulk work items with CSV files or Microsoft Excel to import them to your backlog.

1. Before you add work items, select View options and turn the slider for Parents and Forecasting to Off. Optionally, turn In Progress Items on or off.

   

2. To add a work item, select New Work Item and enter a title. Select Enter or select Add to top. Work items are assigned the default Area Path and Iteration Path selected for the team. For more information, see Manage and configure team tools.

   

   Note

   If you have Stakeholder access, you can only add work items to the bottom of the backlog. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.

Depending on whether you create your project with Basic, Agile, Scrum, or CMMI, the items in your backlog might be called issues, user stories, PBIs, or requirements. All of these terms describe the customer value to be delivered and the work to be performed.

By default, user stories appear on Agile backlogs, issues on Basic backlogs, PBIs and bugs appear on Scrum backlogs, and requirements appear on CMMI backlogs.

Reorder your backlog

Reorder your items to create a prioritized list of work. Review and prioritize your backlog frequently to help your team know what's most important to deliver next.

You can't sort your backlog on a column. To view a sorted listed, select Create query. Save and open the query, and sort the query results. For more information about queries, see Use the query editor to list and manage queries.

To reorder your backlog, drag the work items. Or, if you prefer to use the keyboard, hold down the Alt key and use the up and down arrows.

Note

To reorder a backlog, you must have Basic or higher level access. If you have Stakeholder access, you can't reorder backlog items. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.

Backlogs that participate in portfolio management or that contain nested same-type child items might not allow you to reorder the items. For more information, see these articles:

• Work with multi-team ownership of backlog items
• Troubleshoot reordering and nesting issues

Add details and estimates to backlog items

Building and prioritizing your backlog provides a high-level roadmap. Before your team can start work on any item, however, they need more details. Capture the details within the work item form.

To open each item, double-click or select Enter. Add all the information you want to track. Change one or more field values, add a description, or make a note in the Discussion section. You can also choose the Attachments tab and drag a file onto it to share the file with others.

Enter as much detail as the team needs to do the following tasks:

• Understand the scope
• Estimate the work required
• Develop tests
• Ensure that the end product meets acceptance criteria

Note

You can only assign work to a single user. If you need to assign work to more than one user, add a work item for each user and distinguish the work to be done by title and description. The Assigned To field only accepts user accounts that have been added to a project or team.

Agile process

For example, here we assign the story to Raisa Pokrovskaya and we add a discussion note, at-mentioning Raisa.

Select Save & Close when you're done.

Basic process

For example, here we assign the issue to Raisa Pokrovskaya and we add a discussion note, at-mentioning Raisa.

Choose Save & Close when you're done.

Scrum process

For example, here we assign the product backlog item to Christie Church and set an Effort level of 8.

Choose Save & Close when you're done.

CMMI process

For example, here we assign the product backlog item to Jamal Hartnett and set Size to 8.

Choose Save & Close when you're done.

To plan a sprint, at a minimum, estimate the effort involved to implement each backlog item. To capture effort in the work item form, use Effort for Basic or Scrum, Story Points for Agile, or Size for CMMI.

Field

Usage

---

Effort, Story Points, Size

Provide a relative estimate of the amount of work required to complete a PBI. For user stories and requirements, you capture estimates in Story Points and Size.

Most Agile methods recommend that you set estimates for backlog items based on relative size of work. Such methods include powers of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8) and the Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and so on). Use any numeric unit of measurement your team prefers.

The estimates you set for Effort, Size, or Story Points are used to calculate velocity and forecast sprints.

Business Value

Specify a priority that captures the relative value of a PBI compared to other PBIs. The higher the number, the greater the business value.

Use this field when you want to capture a priority separate from the changeable backlog stack ranking.

Description

Provide enough detail to create shared understanding of scope and support estimation efforts. Focus on the user, what they want to accomplish, and why. Don't describe how to develop the product. Do provide sufficient details so that your team can write tasks and test cases to implement the item.

Acceptance Criteria

Define what Done means by describing the criteria for the team to use to verify whether the PBI or the bug fix is fully implemented.

Before work begins on a PBI or bug, describe the criteria for customer acceptance as clearly as possible. To determine the acceptance criteria, have conversations between the team and customers. These criteria help ensure a common understanding within the team to meet customer expectations. Also, this information provides the basis for acceptance testing.

Impact Assessment (CMMI only)

Describes the customer impact of not implementing the requirement. You might include details from the Kano model about whether this requirement is in the surprise, required, or obvious categories.

Show or hide In Progress Items

From the View options selector, you can turn on In Progress Items. If you turn it off, items that are in the Active, Committed, or Resolved states or states that map to the In Progress category state don't appear in the backlog.

You'd likely choose to hide In Progress items when you want to forecast work. For more information, see Forecast your product backlog.

Show or hide work items in Completed state

From the View options selector, you can choose to show or hide Completed Child items.

Choose to show Completed child items when you want to view rollup columns.

Choose to hide Completed child items when you want to forecast work. For more information, see Forecast your product backlog.

Note

Completed or closed work items don't display on the backlogs and boards after their Changed Date value is greater than 183 days (about a half a year). You can still list these items by using a query. If you want them to show up on a backlog or board, you can make a minor change to them, which resets the clock.

Your product backlog is one of three classes of backlogs available to you, backlogs, boards, and plans. If you don't see the work items you expect on your backlog, see Set up your backlogs and boards.

Next steps

With your backlog in place, your team can begin work on the top-priority items. Now it's time to decide how you want to work as a team. Do you want to use Scrum or Kanban? You can use these methods independently or together.

Scrum: Schedule sprints or Kanban

Teams who want the least overhead for tracking and estimating might prefer Kanban. Teams who like to work at a steady cadence and plot the details of their sprint plan might prefer Scrum and sprint planning.

Related articles

• Configure and customize Azure Boards
• Bulk modify work items
• Copy or clone work items
• Display rollup progress bars or counts
• Interactively filter backlogs, boards, queries, and plans
• Backlog priority or stack rank order
• Keyboard shortcuts