What is AzureDevOps?

Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s integrated, cloud-based platform that provides a complete set of tools to manage the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). Think of it as an all-in-one toolkit where teams plan work, write code, build applications, test them, and deploy them to production — all in one place.

Azure DevOps = Plan + Code + Build + Test + Deploy, all connected together. Instead of using 5 different tools for each step, you use one platform

Azure DevOps is made up of five integrated services, each covering a different part of the development process:

Azure DevOps is organized in two levels:

• Organization: The top-level container — like a company account. Example: ‘OnlineBankingCorp’. You can have multiple projects inside one organization.

• Project: A workspace for a specific product or team. Example: ‘OnlineBankingApp’. All the boards, repos, pipelines, and test plans for that product live here.

Process Templates

When you create a project, you must choose a process template. This determines what work item types are available. Azure DevOps supports four templates:

Azure Boards — Plan and Track Work

Azure Boards is the work management heart of Azure DevOps. It gives your team a digital space to create, assign, prioritize, and track all the work needed to build a product. It replaces sticky notes, spreadsheets, and email threads with a structured, visual system.

Work Item Types

A Work Item is any unit of work in the project. Each item has a title, description, assignee, state, and many other fields. In the Scrum template, these are the six work item types:

Let’s do some practical to make this blog interesting so, we have one project Online Banking App

This is the things that we have to enter in our “Online Banking App” Organization section

For Practical I will attach GitHub Link at end of this blog

Boards — The Kanban View

The Board is a visual Kanban-style view of your sprint’s work items organized in columns. Each column represents a state in the workflow. You drag cards left to right as work progresses. This is used during daily standups to see what everyone is working on.

Default Columns of Scrum Template

Swimlanes are horizontal rows on the board that categorize work differently. They answer the question: ‘How should work be organized?’

• Default swimlane: All normal work items
• Expedite swimlane: High-priority or urgent items that need immediate attention
• Custom swimlanes: You can create your own — for example, one row per team or one row per Epic

WIP(Work in Progress)

WIP Limits prevent your team from taking on too much work at once. You can set a maximum number of cards allowed in any column. For example, setting the ‘Active’ column WIP limit to 3 means only 3 items can be in Active at any time. This forces the team to finish work before starting new items.

Backlogs — The Prioritized Work List

A Backlog is an ordered, prioritized list of all the work that needs to be done. It is the single source of truth for what the team needs to build. Items at the top have the highest priority and will be worked on first.

Three Backlog Levels

Product Backlog vs Sprint Backlog

Backlog Grooming

Backlog Grooming (also called Backlog Refinement) is a regular meeting where the Product Owner and team review the backlog together. During grooming you:

• Add story points to items that have none

• Split large PBIs into smaller, more manageable ones

• Remove outdated or irrelevant items

• Reprioritize items based on business needs

• Write or update Acceptance Criteria for upcoming items

Sprints — Time-Boxed Work Cycles

A Sprint (also called an Iteration) is a fixed time period — usually 2 weeks — during which the team commits to completing a specific set of work items. Sprints are the heartbeat of Scrum methodology.

The Scrum Sprint Cycle

Queries — Search and Filter Work Items

A Query is a saved search that filters work items based on conditions you define. It’s like a custom SQL WHERE clause for your project data. Once saved, a query runs live every time you open it — always showing fresh, up-to-date results.

Three Query Types

Building a Query — Fields, Operators, Values

Every query clause has three parts: Field + Operator + Value. Multiple clauses are joined with AND or OR.

• My Queries: Private queries visible only to you. Good for personal daily tracking.

• Shared Queries: Visible to the whole team. Organized in folders. Can be used as data sources for Dashboard Widgets.

There are Other Query name also such as Area Path , ID or Parent ID

Azure Repos — Source Code Management

Azure Repos is the version control service in Azure DevOps. It stores your code safely, tracks every change ever made, enables multiple developers to work on the same codebase simultaneously, and prevents conflicts through branching and merging.

Key Git Concepts

• Repository (Repo): The storage location for all your project’s code and history

• Branch: An independent line of development. The main branch (called ‘main’ or ‘master’) is production code. Feature branches are for new work.

• Commit: Saving a snapshot of your changes with a message describing what you did

• Push: Uploading your local commits to the remote Azure Repos server

• Pull Request (PR): Requesting that your branch be merged into main. Enables code review before merging.

• Merge: Combining code from one branch into another

Azure Pipelines — Automate Build, Test & Deploy

Azure Pipelines is the CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment) service. It automatically builds, tests, and deploys your code whenever a developer pushes changes. This eliminates manual build steps and catches bugs early.

Azure Artifacts — Package Management

Azure Artifacts lets teams create, host, and share packages (reusable code libraries) within the organization. Instead of every project re-writing the same utility code, you publish it as a package once and all projects reference it.

I am attaching a Dashboard Guide here : https://github.com/Amancs1541/Azure-DevOps-Guide.git