In the realm of DevOps platforms, Azure DevOps stands out as a popular choice for comprehensive project management. It offers various features like project management, version control, and release pipelines. However, the built-in dashboard lacks the ability to offer insights into the entire organization.

DevOpSmartBoard is a solution designed to overcome this limitation. It offers enhanced reporting capabilities for organizations. Whether it is for a specific project or providing insights at the organization level, DevOpSmartBoard has the capability to meet both the requirements. By leveraging these insights, informed decisions can be made to optimize software development processes and enhance overall efficiency. 

DevOpSmartBoard currently provides the following reports:

1. * DevOps Organization and project level metrics: Gain a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s performance metrics across projects.
2. * Query work items with versatile filters and export them to Excel: Effortlessly retrieve and analyze work items based on specific criteria.
3. * User Audit: Obtain a count of user licenses and types and identify inactive users who haven’t utilized Azure DevOps in the past 30 days.
4. * Traceability from Epics to granular level Tasks: Seamlessly track and visualize the connections between Epics and their corresponding detailed Tasks.
5. * User Capacity across Teams & Projects: Effectively manage and optimize user capacity allocation across multiple teams and projects.
6. * Project Health: Monitor the health and status of your projects, ensuring timely and informed decision-making.
7. * Reports on Azure Pipelines at organization levels: Get comprehensive insights into Azure Pipelines at the organization level, enabling efficient analysis and optimization.

1. * The landing page of DevOpSmartBoard provides users with a list of available organizations that are linked to their profile, accessible through the URL https://dev.azure.com/user-name/.
2. * Once an organization is selected, users have the option to choose from a variety of visual overview options, including Org Level Reports, Subscriber Reports, User Capacity Reports, and Azure Pipeline Reports, among others.

Org Level Report:

Org Overview:

1. * The Organization Overview report presents details about the entire organization. The report page showcases essential information including project specifics such as title, description, version control type, work-items count, and project administration in its initial section.

1. * Additionally, the report provides insights on user capacity and subscribers, offering a comprehensive overview of the number of individuals utilizing the application and the extent to which they are actively engaged with it. This data offers valuable information about user adoption and utilization patterns. This dashboard aggregates key metrics like project count, repositories, work items, users, pipelines, and most importantly, visualizes vital trends. This empowers leaders to quickly assess overall project health, identify potential bottlenecks, and prioritize focus areas. Below are some of the images of the Organization Overview
2. * Use Case: Quickly assess overall project health and identify potential areas for improvement.

All Project Details:

1. * Dive deeper into individual projects with this section, offering a comprehensive overview of each project’s name, description, process template, version control type, work item count, administrators, and even details of installed extensions.

1. * This empowers project managers to manage projects effectively, assign appropriate access control, and stay informed about project configurations.
2. * Use Case: Easily access and manage project information and extensions.

Query Work Items:

1. * Gone are the days of sifting through mountains of data. This feature empowers users to filter and export work item data based on specific criteria like type, assignee, state, and sprint. Additionally, it presents graphical representations, allowing for in-depth analysis of work item trends, resource allocation across teams, and progress within specific categories. This equips project managers and team leads to make informed decisions about resource allocation, identify potential roadblocks, and track progress effectively.
2. * Use Case: Analyze work item trends and identify bottlenecks or resource allocation issues.

1. * Users can switch to the table view by clicking on the chart.

1. * The table representation of all work items provides a convenient way to access individual work items within their Azure DevOps environment. By simply clicking on the title of any work item, users can directly navigate to the respective work item in Azure DevOps for detailed information and updates.
2. * Furthermore, this table also offers the option to export the data in either Excel or PDF formats. This functionality enables users to conveniently save or share the work item information in their preferred format for further analysis or collaboration.

Userlist Groups:

1. * Managing user access and group memberships can be tedious. This feature simplifies the process by providing detailed information about user project access and group memberships. Additionally, it offers filtering and download options, enabling easy management, monitoring of user access, and ensuring appropriate permission assignments.
2. * Use Case: Monitor user access and manage group memberships.

Activities:

1. * Individual performance and workload distribution are crucial for team success. This report provides a visual overview of key work items for individual users, including assigned work items, created work items, pull requests, builds, releases, commits, and pending approvals. This empowers team leads and individual contributors to analyze performance, identify potential workload imbalances, and optimize workflow.
2. * Use Case: Track individual performance and identify areas for improvement.

1. * Users also have the option to switch to a table view by clicking on the graphs. Additionally, clicking on the titles within the table will redirect users to the respective Azure DevOps page, providing seamless access to further information and interactions related to the activities.

Kanban Board:

1. * Visualize work item flow across projects and date ranges with the Kanban board. This interactive tool allows filtering by stage and user for focused analysis, providing valuable insights into work item flow, identification of bottlenecks within the kanban process, and real-time progress monitoring.
2. * Use Case: Visualize work item flow and identify bottlenecks within the kanban process.

Commits Report:

1. * Analyze and track code changes effectively. This report displays detailed information about code commits, including ID, repository, committer name, date, and comment. This empowers developers and code reviewers to analyze code changes, identify potential issues, and track development activity efficiently.
2. * Use Case: Analyze code changes and identify potential issues.

Pull Request Report:

1. * Streamline code collaboration and ensure code quality. This report summarizes code merge requests, providing details about project, repository, creator, and reviewer. This facilitates tracking of code changes, collaboration efforts, and ensures code quality throughout the development process.
2. * Use Case: Track code changes, collaboration, and ensure code quality.

1. * By toggling the slider to the right, users can switch to a chart view. The subsequent section of the report shows the Pull Requests based on the selected filters. The accompanying image displays a list of Pull Requests at the Organization level. Additionally, the table view includes a count of the total number of Pull Requests for the selected criteria, which is shown at the bottom of the table.

Approver Report:

1. * Monitor release pipelines and identify potential approval delays. This report displays approval data for specific projects and date ranges with filtering options by stages. This equips release managers to monitor progress, identify potential bottlenecks, and ensure timely deployments.
2. * Use Case: Monitor release pipelines and identify potential approval delays.

Process Template Details:

1. * Gain insights into project distribution trends and process usage patterns. This feature provides graphical and tabular representations of project distribution by type, empowering leaders to understand project distribution patterns and identify trends in process usage across the organization.
2. * Use Case: Analyze project distribution and identify trends in process usage.

Branch Policy Report:

1. * Ensure adherence to coding standards and maintain code quality. This report lists checked and unchecked branch policies for selected projects, allowing developers and code reviewers to verify compliance with branching and code quality standards.
2. * Use Case: Ensure compliance with branching and code quality standards.

Build Minutes Data:

1. * Identify resource usage trends and optimize build processes. This feature displays the total build minutes used across projects, enabling build engineers to identify projects with high resource consumption and optimize build processes for improved efficiency.
2. * Use Case: Identify resource usage trends and optimize build processes.

Project Dashboard:

Project Overview:

1. * Delve deeper into individual project health and performance. This dashboard provides project-specific overviews with key metrics like repositories, work items, pull requests, users, pipelines, and graphical analysis of trends.

1. * This equips project managers to gain valuable insights into project health, identify areas for improvement, and track progress over time.
2. * Use Case: Gain insights into individual project health and performance.

Project Health:

1. * Proactive problem identification and resolution are crucial for project success. This feature displays critical bugs, failed builds/releases, and key performance indicators (KPIs) in a clear and concise manner. 

1. * This empowers project managers to proactively address critical issues impacting project health and performance and make data-driven decisions for improvement.
2. * Use Case: Identify and address critical issues impacting project health and performance.

Group Users:

1. * Manage team membership and access within projects efficiently. This feature lists group members for selected projects, allowing project managers to view member details and manage group membership, ensuring appropriate resource allocation and access control.
2. * Use Case: Manage team membership and access within projects.

Activities Report:

1. * Presents a visual overview of key work items, enabling quick analysis of individual performance and workload distribution.
2. * Use Case: Gain insights into individual and team activities, identify potential areas for improvement or redistribution of work.

Untouched Work Items Report:

1. * Proactive project management is key to success. This report identifies work items that haven’t been actively worked on recently, allowing project managers to address potential roadblocks early on and ensure timely project completion.
2. * Use Case: Proactively address potential roadblocks and ensure all work items receive attention.

Time in Workitem State:

1. * The “Time in Workitem State” report provides insights into the duration work items spend in each state. It displays the current state of a work item and the total time it has been in that state. You can filter the report by work item age, sprints, or saved queries.
2. * Use Case: As a developer, you suspect bugs are causing delays in the “In Progress” state. You can use the “Time in Workitem State” report filtered by state to see the average time work items spend in “In Progress” compared to other states. This helps identify if “In Progress” has a significantly higher average time, potentially indicating debugging delays.

DORA Metrics:

Deployment Frequency Metrics:

1. * Gain valuable insights into deployment performance. This feature provides charts and tables that analyze deployment state, frequency, and success rates across projects, allowing release managers to understand deployment performance, identify areas for improvement, and optimize release cycles.
2. * Use Case: Understand deployment performance, identify areas for improvement, and optimize release cycles.

Change Failure Rate:

1. * Identify projects with high failure rates for proactive improvement. This feature visualizes the distribution of failure rates across projects, enabling release managers to focus their efforts on projects experiencing frequent failures and implement necessary improvements.
2. * Use Case: Identify projects with high failure rates and investigate root causes to improve release quality.

Lead Time:

1. * Calculates and displays average lead time per project, considering the time taken for code changes to be merged from the moment they are first committed.
2. * Provides graphical representation of lead time trends over time, allowing users to identify potential bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
3. * Enables filtering by project and date range for targeted analysis.

Use Case:

1. * Understand the efficiency of development and deployment processes across projects.
2. * Identify projects with lengthy lead times and investigate potential causes (e.g., code reviews, merges, testing).
3. * Monitor and track improvements in lead time over time, aiming to reduce the overall time it takes to deliver changes to production.

Traceability:

1. * Gain a comprehensive understanding of work item relationships. This feature provides hierarchical relationships between work items, enabling users to track work item lineage and dependencies across different stages of the SDLC. This fosters better collaboration and understanding of how work items are interconnected.
2. * Use Case: Identify work item dependencies, track progress, and ensure efficient workflow.

Multiple Team Capacity:

1. * Optimize team resource allocation and workload management. This feature analyzes team and user capacity based on sprints, providing insights into available resources and potential bottlenecks. This empowers project managers and team leads to effectively plan and allocate resources across teams, ensuring balanced workloads and efficient project execution.
2. * Use Case: Optimize resource allocation, prevent overloading, and ensure team efficiency.

User Capacity:

1. * Displays user capacity and remaining effort for selected sprints at the organization level.
2. * Shows associated projects and teams, along with remaining effort breakdown.
3. * Use Case: Track individual workload, identify potential bottlenecks, and ensure balanced work distribution.

Subscribers:

Org-wise Subscribers:

1. * Shows the number of licensed users with various subscription types.
2. * Allows downgrading inactive users and exporting subscriber details.
3. * Use Case: Manage user subscriptions, optimize costs, and ensure efficient license utilization.

Project-wise Subscribers:

1. * Displays a breakdown of subscribers by subscription type within each project.
2. * Use Case: Track project-specific access and ensure appropriate resource allocation.

Azure Pipeline Report:

1. * Offers insights into app deployment across environments.
2. * Provides details on build, release pipelines, and pipeline usage results across projects for a specific duration.
3. * Use Case: Monitor and analyze pipeline performance, identify potential bottlenecks, and optimize deployment processes.

Build Details:

1. * Shows historical build data for selected projects and date range.
2. * Allows filtering and exporting build reports.
3. * Use Case: Analyze build trends, identify failures, and troubleshoot build issues.

Release Details:

1. * Presents release details in both tabular and chart formats.
2. * Enables filtering and exporting release reports.
3. * Use Case: Track and analyze release progress, identify successful/failed releases, and investigate root causes of failures.

Pipeline Usage:

1. * Summarizes total pipeline minutes, average queue time, parallel jobs, and associated costs at the organization level.
2. * Provides project-level breakdown of pipeline usage and cost.
3. * Use Case: Analyze pipeline resource utilization, identify cost optimization opportunities, and ensure efficient pipeline utilization.

Test Management:

Test Traceability:

1. * Shows test plans, suites, and cases associated with selected projects.
2. * Use Case: Understand test coverage, identify gaps, and ensure comprehensive testing.

Test Run:

1. * Provides details and attachments for historical test runs in selected projects.
2. * Use Case: Analyze test execution results, identify defects, and track progress towards quality goals.

Other DevOps Tools:

Provide details about Canarys tools.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, DevOpSmartBoard is a powerful solution designed to enhance Azure DevOps reporting capabilities. It addresses the limitation of the built-in dashboards by providing comprehensive insights and reporting features at both the organization and project levels.

With DevOpSmartBoard, organizations gain invaluable visibility into their software development processes, allowing them to make informed decisions and optimize their workflows. The solution offers a wide range of reports and charts, including organization overviews, project details, user activities, process template information, Kanban boards, and more.

Users can access detailed information about projects, repositories, work items, extensions, and user activities, all in a user-friendly interface. They have the flexibility to filter and customize the reports based on various criteria, such as state, date range, and work item type.

DevOpSmartBoard also empowers users to export data in formats like Excel and PDF, facilitating further analysis and collaboration. The solution enables seamless navigation between reports and Azure DevOps, allowing users to drill down into specific details and take action directly from the platform.

By leveraging DevOpSmartBoard, organizations can optimize their software development processes, improve efficiency, and make data-driven decisions. It provides a holistic view of the entire organization and project-specific insights, enabling teams to identify bottlenecks, track progress, allocate resources effectively, and enhance overall productivity. For more details contact us at devopstools@ecanarys.com