Add or edit a Delivery Plan
Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server 2022
Delivery Plans provide a highly interactive calendar view of multiple team backlogs. For the use cases, benefits, and interactions you can do, see Review team Delivery Plans.
Use this article to learn how to complete these tasks:
- Open a plan from the list of defined plans
- Add and edit a plan
- Add field criteria, customize cards, and add markers
Note
This article describes how to add or edit Delivery Plans 2.0 which is available for Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server 2022 and later versions. For information on the Delivery Plans Marketplace extension which supports Azure DevOps Server 2020 and earlier versions, see Delivery Plans 1.0.
Prerequisites
- To add or edit a Delivery Plan, you must be a member of the Contributors group for the project where you add the plan.
- To add team backlogs to a plan, you must have view permissions to those projects.
- To view a Delivery Plan, you must be a member of the Project Collection Valid Users group. Users granted Stakeholder access for a private project can view plans. Users granted Stakeholder access for a public project can add and view plans.
- To manage permissions for a Delivery Plan or edit or delete a plan, you must be the creator of the plan. Or, you must be a member of the Project Administrators, Project Collection Administrators group, or be granted explicit permission through the plan's Security dialog. For more information, see Manage Delivery Plan permissions.
Before you define a plan
To add and configure a Delivery Plan, the following elements must be configured:
- Teams and team backlogs.
- Team product or portfolio backlog must be enabled.
- Area paths and team area paths assignments.
- Iteration (sprint) paths and team iterations
- Iteration Paths must be assigned Start and End Dates or they won't appear on the plan.
- Also, Iteration Paths must be selected for the team whose backlogs you select, or work items associated with those Iteration Paths won't appear on the plan.
- Each team must have defined product backlog items, or portfolio backlogs and assigned those items to either a Start Date and End Date or an Iteration Path.
Tip
If you edit a plan and don't see the changes you made appear in the plan, refresh your browser. A browser refresh is needed some times to trigger the updates.
Plan customization options
Once you open the Plan settings dialog, choose one of the following tabs to set your customization options.
| Page | Use to... |
|---|---|
| Overview | Edit the plan Name or Description. |
| Teams | Add or remove a team backlog. You can add up to 20 backlog levels for Azure DevOps Services or 15 backlog levels for Azure DevOps Server 2022. You can add a mix of backlog levels and teams from any project defined for the organization. |
| Field criteria | Specify field criteria to filter work item types displayed on the plan. All criteria are evaluated as an AND statement. If no fields are specified, then all work item types that appear on the teams backlog level appear on the delivery plan. |
| Markers | Add up to 30 milestone markers to the plan. Specify a label and select a color. |
| Fields | Add or remove fields from cards to display on the plan, similar to how you customize them for your Kanban board. You can't add rich-text (HTML) fields, such as the Description field, to a card even if it appears in the list. These field types represent too many challenges to format on a card. |
| Styles | Add styling rules to change card color based on field criteria. |
| Tag colors | Add tags and specify a tag color. Optionally enable or disable a tag color. |
Add a plan
Open Boards>Delivery Plans.
To add a plan, choose New Plan.
All users have permissions to create a plan and manage the plans they create.
Fill in the form to name, describe, and specify the team backlogs that you want to appear within your plan. You can add up to 15 teams to a plan.
When defining a plan, note the following information:
- Use the name and description field to clearly identify your plan within the project
- You can choose one or more teams from any project defined in the organization or collection. There can be up to a maximum of 15 teams
- You can choose one or more active backlogs for a team
Note
If you aren't able to select a backlog level, check the Team Backlog settings to ensure the backlog level is enabled for the team. For more information, see Select backlog navigation levels for your team.
- You can reorder the team backlogs by dragging and dropping them into the sequence you want
- To filter for specific work items, specify the field criteria. For example, to exclude bugs from the view, add the following criteria:
Work Item Type <> Bug.
Edit a plan
Once you've defined a plan, you can modify or further customize it.
Choose the Settings to open the Plans settings dialog.
Then, choose the page you want to edit based on the customizations you want to make. Here, we add the Tags to the Field criteria. Only work items that contain the Build 2021 tag appear in the Delivery Plan.
Choose fields to appear on cards
Show those fields that are useful for your review purposes or if they contain keywords that you may want to use to filter your plan. Unlike the Kanban board, you can't change the field displayed on the card. First, open the work item to make field changes.
Tip
To add a custom field, you must first add it to the process used to customize the project.
From the Plan settings dialog, choose the Fields tab. Place a check mark in the check box for those fields you want to have appear on the board.
To add a field, choose the
plus icon and enter the name of a field you want to add. You can add both default and custom fields, including Boolean fields. The only fields you can't add are rich-text or HTML fields.Here we select all standard fields and add the Story Points and Priority fields to display on cards.
Tip
To show the Title of the parent work item, choose the Parent field. Choosing the Parent title from a card opens the parent work item. To change the parent work item, open the child work item and remove the link and add a different parent work item. You can filter your plan based on parent work items, whether the Parent field is added to cards or not.
To remove a field, choose the
delete icon next to the field.When you're done with your changes, choose Save.
Add milestone markers
To set a marker, open Markers, specify a date and specify a hexadecimal color, or choose the color palette icon to change to a new color selected by the system.
To add more markers, choose + Add marker. You can add up to 30 markers. The + Add marker button becomes disabled after 30 markers have been added.
Choose Save when you're done.
Markers appear on the plan as shown.
When you're done with your changes, choose Save.
Change card color
With styling rules, you can cause cards to change color when their corresponding work items meet the field criteria that you set. This feature is similar to the one you can define for Kanban boards as described in Customize cards. Here we highlight the card based on its Tags assignment.
To change the card color, open the Styles tab. You can specify up to 10 styles. There are some limits to the fields you choose.
Choose +Add styling rule. Enter a name for the style and choose the color from the color picker. Then specify the field criteria. You can add multiple field values. For style purposes, they're all evaluated as a logical AND. Choose the field and the value for the field.
For example, here we choose to highlight cards with a Priority=1.
Note
Some fields aren't supported for selection, such as the Title field, Description and other rich-text fields, Assigned To and other identity fields. Also, you may be able to select a field but not be able to specify a value or the value you want. For example, you can't specify Tags that are Empty or Not Empty.
Set color for an Iteration Path
You can highlight work items for a team's current Iteration Path by specifying the @CurrentIteration macro in the Styles tab as shown in the following image. For more information on using the @CurrentIteration macros, see Query by date or current iteration, Create queries for your team's current iteration.
Set tag colors
Before setting tag colors, first add tags to backlog items that you want to highlight with color.
From the Plan settings dialog, choose Tag colors and then choose
Add tag color. Then, select the tag and the color you want to appear on the cards.
To enable or disable a tag color, select the Enabled checkbox.
When you're done with your changes, choose Save.
Tip
If tags don't display on the cards, choose Fields and make sure that you've checked Show Tags.
Programmatically manage Delivery Plans
You can manage plans using the REST API, Plans.
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