2019-01-16: Setting up Azure DevOps with KISS Backlog

What is KISS Backlog?

Well, it's a keep it simple, stupid backlog. Why oh why do I want Sprint and Epics, Features and so on. This can be done much simpler and more flexible with tagging of tasks and listing these tasks based on a query.

Never have I ever as a developer needed anything than a flat list of tasks that I can group and query based on some criteria that I know about. Ranking can be done based on the Tagging and a custom Ranking decimal field.

Goal

• Setup Azure Devops based on the description above
• Create a Task query based on Tags
• Make it easy to use Tags during creation of Tasks
• List all Tags in use

Prerequisites

• Azure account or Create a new one: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/
• Create a DevOps Organization and Project based on the "Agile" template. Go to https://dev.azure.com and login to your Azure account

Navigate to the Board and create some tasks:

The figure above show the default view of work items. Click on "Column Options" to remove everything you don't need.

New simplified view:

• Removed Task Id, Area area, Comments, Activity date
• Added and Sorting on "Created Date"

The create Task view does not have a nice way to see all Tags. Install this:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=YodLabs.TagsManager2

• Click on the "Get it free" link and follow instructions

• Click on "Install"
• Navigate to your Azure DevOps project and look for "Tags":

Behold all your Tags in one place. Too bad it was not a nice flat list in a table, because this view is not going to scale very good when I have 100+ Tags, but it's functional for my current purpose.