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Useful Azure DevOps Boards Queries

A collection of some useful Azure DevOps Boards queries.

Grooming queries

You will likely want to update the filters on these query to suite your needs, for example by filtering on specific work item types, state etc. What is saved and shown here are just the barebone queries.

View unparented items

View bugs parented under user stories/epics

⚠️This is a violation of the expected Epic -> Feature -> User story/Bug -> Task hierarchy

View all work items in the current iteration

You can also time travel across multiple iteration by adding +/- count in front of the @CurrentIteration

View active work that is not assigned to the sprint

This would likely indicate some previous work that has not been updated or has potentially fallen through the cracks.

View work items logged in the last x days

View ill defined work items

The default looks at items with no descriptions, or not acceptance criteria or no story points.

View work items pending review

View unestimated work items

View blocked work items

View work items that may need to be broken down This is determined by high estimates and you can decide on the threshold.

View stale work items You can decide on the time period for this to be considered stale.

View unassigned items in the current iteration

View work items that are due soon

View overdue work items

Other queries

View items assigned to me

View items that I am following

View items where I have recently been mentioned

Instead of constantly querying the grooming type queries, you can assign them to a dashboard as charts or as tile widgets so you always have a good view.

💡 In addition to placing charts and other visualization on a dashboard, you can only place these on the query itself. For example you can create a pivot table) to visualize the data from the query.

Here are recommendations of some great things to visualize

• Bug trends over time
• Task burn down
• Test case pass/fail rate

Additional tips for working with queries

• Utilize the predefined variables like @Me, @Today, @CurrentIterations etc to your advantage.
• Use tags wisely. These can help filter work items, but if used without disciple they can go out of hand fast. As a general rule, if you have no use case to query by a given tag, you should not be using it. This will keep your tags list clean.