Blog

Associating Commits to Work Items for Traceability

Jun 13, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

It's a smell when I don't see commits associated with a work item. It usually means the Developers decided that traceability isn't worth the extra step. It is. Linking a Git commit to the work item it …

Azure DevOps Development Scrum

What Makes a Good Bug Report

May 27, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

A bug report is exactly what it sounds like: the reporting of a bug or other unwanted behavior in the product. The point of writing a good one is to give the Scrum Team enough information to …

Azure Boards Testing Scrum

Nexus Sprint Planning in Practice

May 12, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

People hear "Sprint Planning at scale" and imagine a giant meeting with sixty people in a room trying to plan one enormous Sprint. That's not how Nexus Sprint Planning works, and if that's what you're …

Scrum Azure DevOps

From Manual to Automated Acceptance Tests

Apr 20, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Professional Scrum Developers agree that automated testing is awesome and a must-have. But if your team isn't there yet, "go automate everything" is useless advice. The good news is that the path from …

Azure Test Plans Testing Development

In-Sprint vs. Out-of-Sprint Bugs

Apr 2, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Not all bugs are the same kind of problem, and treating them as if they were leads teams astray. A bug can be found in a product already delivered to production, in a done Increment from a previous …

Azure Boards Scrum Testing

Nexus Support in Azure DevOps, Honestly

Mar 18, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Let me be candid, because I'd rather you hear it from me than discover it mid-scale. There is no first-class support for Nexus in Azure DevOps. There's no "enable Nexus" switch, no built-in Nexus …

Azure DevOps Scrum

The Supreme Court Leaves the Human-Only Rule Standing

Mar 5, 2026 • 2 min read • Richard Hundhausen

This is the last stop on a road I've been following since the overview and the appeals court ruling. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, declining to hear …

AI Development WhoOwnsTheCode

Reusing Tests and Building a Regression Suite

Mar 4, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Every Sprint you build a test plan full of acceptance tests. When the Sprint ends, what should you keep, and how? Not everything deserves to outlive its Sprint, but the tests that protect your …

Azure Test Plans Testing Scrum

Tags, Fields, and Area Paths: Slicing the Backlog

Feb 10, 2026 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Sooner or later your Product Backlog gets big enough that you want to slice it: show me just the mobile work, just the bugs, just the items for the payments area. Azure Boards gives you three tools …

Azure Boards Scrum