Blog

Don't Create Tasks Before Sprint Planning

Sep 10, 2025 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

It's a smell when I see tasks created and associated with a PBI before Sprint Planning. I run into it constantly, usually from well-meaning teams who think they're getting a head start. They're not. …

Scrum Azure Boards

Project Dashboards vs. Team Dashboards

Aug 26, 2025 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

When you create a dashboard in Azure DevOps, you make a choice that's easy to breeze past: is this a project dashboard or a team dashboard? They look similar and they're built from the same widgets, …

Azure DevOps Scrum

ATDD on a Scrum Team, Concretely

Aug 6, 2025 • 2 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Starting work by creating failing tests can feel counterintuitive and weird. It also works. Test-driven development proves that every day. Acceptance test-driven development, or ATDD, takes the same …

Scrum Azure Test Plans Testing

Shared Queries Every Scrum Team Should Create

Jul 21, 2025 • 2 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Work item queries are one of the most underused features in Azure Boards. They let you view, filter, and sort your work so you can decide what to act on, and they can power charts on dashboards and …

Azure Boards Scrum Preferred Practice

Information Radiators That Actually Inform

Jul 7, 2025 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

An information radiator is any display, physical or electronic, placed somewhere visible that shows process or product information. The phrase has been around for years, but plenty of teams set one up …

Azure DevOps Scrum

Acceptance Is Not Acceptance Testing

Jun 16, 2025 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

As I visit with software development teams, I keep running into the same confusion about the word "acceptance." Two ideas get jammed together that really shouldn't be. Let me pull them apart, because …

Scrum Azure Test Plans Testing

Stop Using the Value Area Field

May 27, 2025 • 2 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Open a PBI work item form in the Scrum process and you'll find a field called Value Area with two options: Business and Architectural. It looks helpful. It isn't. I'd leave it alone. The problem …

Scrum Azure Boards

Marketplace Extensions Worth Installing on Day One

May 13, 2025 • 3 min read • Richard Hundhausen

The Azure DevOps Marketplace boasts more than 1,200 extensions across all the services. That's a lot to wade through, and most teams either ignore it entirely or install a dozen shiny things they …

Azure DevOps Tools Scrum

Write Acceptance Criteria You Can Actually Test

Apr 28, 2025 • 2 min read • Richard Hundhausen

Acceptance criteria are the Product Owner's or stakeholders' definition of success for a given PBI. Most teams write them as prose, a few sentences describing what the feature should do, and then move …

Scrum Azure Test Plans Testing