Review team Delivery Plans

You can change the assigned sprint of a work item by dragging it to a new sprint as shown in the following image.

• In order to add and configure a Delivery Plan, you must have the following in place:
  • Installed the Delivery Plans extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace.
  • Be a member of a project and granted Basic access or greater access level. Users granted Stakeholder access cannot add nor view plans.
  • Configured teams
  • Define area paths and assign to a team
  • Define iteration (sprint) paths and configure team iterations
  • Teams have defined user stories, features, or other product or portfolio backlogs and assigned those items to iterations.
• To view a Delivery Plan, you must be a member of the Project Collection Valid Users group. Members of the project's Readers group are valid users. Users with Stakeholder access for a private project can't view or add plans.
• To manage permissions for a Delivery Plan or edit or delete a plan, you must be the creator of the plan, a member of the Project Administrators or Project Collection Administrators group, or granted explicit permission through the plan's Security dialog. For details, see Edit or manage Delivery Plan permissions.

Best practices

• Use a consistent sprint schedule across your project teams and organization. Use the same sprints for backlogs, features, and epics. Don't create specific sprints for epics or other portfolio backlogs.
• Use Start Date and Iteration to specify the time frame for a work item. Or, use Start Date and Target Date. However, don't specify both Iteration and Target Date for a work item. The Target Date will always override the Iteration end date on the plan.
• Minimize the number of fields you choose to display on your cards.
• Eliminate cross-team ownership of area paths. Cross-team area path ownership isn't recommended and can lead to undesirable edge cases.

Note the following:

• Plan views are limited to 12 to 13 months.
• Plan views are limited to a maximum of ten teams/backlogs
• Zooming out can cause fields and tags to disappear from the cards. The further you zoom out, the harder it is to fit items on a card. By design, we hide select items depending on the zoom level.
• Rollup isn't supported for child work items that belong to a different project than that of the originating parent work item.
• If the Start Date or Target Date are missing from a work item, you can add them to the custom process defined for the project as discussed in Add and manage fields (Inheritance process).

1. Open Boards>Plans.

   

2. To add a plan, choose New Plan.

   

   All users, except users assigned Stakeholder access, have permissions to create a plan and manage the plans they create. To manage permissions for a plan, see Set permissions and access for work tracking, Manage or edit Delivery Plans.

3. Fill in the form to name, describe, and specify the team backlogs that you want to appear within your plan.

   

1. Open Boards>Plans.

   

2. To add a plan, choose New Plan.

   

   All users, except users assigned Stakeholder access, have permissions to create a plan and manage the plans they create. To manage permissions for a plan, see Set permissions and access for work tracking, Manage or edit Delivery Plans.

3. Fill in the form to name, describe, and specify the team backlogs that you want to appear within your plan.

   

1. To open the Settings dialog, choose Configure plan settings .

2. Then, choose the page you want to edit. You can customize the plan in the following ways:

   • Edit the teams you've selected and their backlog level

   • Set field criteria to further limit the work items that will appear on the plan

   • Add markers to show important upcoming events on your timeline

   • Customize the fields that display on the cards, similar to how you customize them for your Kanban or taskboard.

     Here, we add the Tags field criteria. Only work items that contain the RC Review tag will appear in the Delivery Plan.

     

3. To set a marker, open the Markers page, specify a date and select a color.

   

   Markers appear on the plan as shown:

   

• Scale the size of the cards and calendar by choosing Zoom out or Zoom in .
• To view previous or future months, choose Scroll calendar left or Scroll calendar right .You can also scroll the plan by clicking the plan and dragging your mouse horizontally.
• To view details for a team, expand the team row by choosing Expand team row or clicking once on a sprint within a team row.
• To expand and collapse all team rows, choose Expand all team rows or Collapse all team rows next to Teams.
• Scroll the view vertically to view teams that appear lower within the plan view.
• To view titles only, choose Collapsed card fields . To view all fields, choose Expand card fields .
• Click a card title to open the backlog item and view details. Close the work item to return to the plan.
• To add a work item to a sprint, choose Add item within the sprint and team you want to add it to.
• To change the fields displayed on the cards, choose More actions .

• Scale the size of the cards (enter + or - to also scale)
• Scroll the view horizontally via the calendar to view previous months or future months (Enter Shift-left or Shift-right to scroll)
• You can also scroll the plan via click and dragging your mouse.
• Scroll the view vertically to view teams that appear lower within the plan view. You can also scroll the plan by clicking the plan and dragging your mouse vertically.
• Click a card title to open the backlog item and view details. Close the work item to return to the plan.
• To view details for a team, expand the team row by choosing Expand team row.
• To expand and collapse all team rows, choose Expand all team rows or Collapse all team rows next to Teams. (Enter u to collapse, o to expand all rows).
• Enter t to quickly toggle fields shown on cards to just the Title or all other card field settings
• To edit the plan and change the fields displayed on the cards, , choose Configure plan settings .

In the following example, Team 1 features expanded, two items are scheduled for delivery in Sprint 50.

You can also quickly see that:

• Team 1 is currently working on Sprint 50 deliverables
• Sprint 50 began on December 14th and is scheduled to end December 25th.
• The team expects to deliver the two features shown by the cards.

Collapse and expand each team row by choosing Expand team row or Collapse team row next to the team name.

For example, here you can see the count of Features for Team 1 for the next 3 sprints. You can collapse/expand team rows by by choosing Expand team row or Collapse team row next to the team name.

Show work that spans one or more iterations - Plans (Preview)

For work items that span one or more iterations, you can define the Start Date and Target Date. The plan displays cards that start and end according to the dates you set as shown in the following image.

The collapsed card view allows you to quickly switch back and forth between cards showing titles only and cards showing all fields configured for the plan. To view titles only, choose Collapsed card fields . To view all fields, choose Expand card fields .

The collapsed card view allows you to quickly switch back and forth between cards showing titles only and cards showing all fields configured for the plan. To toggle between titles only and show all fields, enter "t" from your keyboard.

View rollup of features and epics

Rollup displays a fuller picture of the underlying work directly on the cards in your delivery plan. Rollup views are available for features, epics, or any portfolio backlog you've added to your project. To enable rollup, open your plan settings, choose Fields, and select Show child rollup data.

For example, here we show a plan view of four scenarios with rollup of the child features, user stories, and bugs for a single team.

You can also view rollup from a backlog view as described in Display rollup progress or totals.

View dependencies

To view dependencies for a work item, hover over the upper-right corner and choose the dependency-links icon.

For example, here we show a work item with dependencies to several work items within the same project.

When the dependency is to a work item in another project, the project information is shown as well as other link relationships. A red exclamation mark and red colored arrows indicate there is an issue with the dependency.

Minimize the fields displayed on cards

To quickly change the cards to only show their Title, enter the keyboard shortcut 't'. This will hide all other fields, as shown in the following image, the Assigned to field no longer appears. To persist this view, edit the plan's settings for card fields.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can use the following keyboard shortcuts when interacting with a delivery plan. To view the valid shortcuts, enter ? when viewing a plan from the Boards>Plans or Work>Plans page.

To toggle between card titles only and card details, enter t.

Home     Select first item
Enter      Open item
n            New item

Ctrl+↑  Move item up
Ctrl+↓  Move item down
Ctrl+←  Move item left
Ctrl+→  Move item right
Shift+←  Pan timeline left
Shift+→  Pan timeline right

u            Collapse all backlogs
o            Expand all backlogs

Shift+pageup    Focus on previous team
Shift+pagedown  Focus on next team
Ctrl+Shift+f      Filter results