FlowboardsFeatures
Fifteen things Azure DevOps can’t do easily. Flowboards does them now.
Each one works on your own boards, with your own sign-in, and nothing to host. Every “Try it” opens that page of the live demo.
- Try it
“When will it be done?” answered with a date
A Monte Carlo forecast from your team’s real pace: “85% likely by 14 Nov”, or “85% likely 23 or more done by the end of the month”.
In Azure DevOps: A velocity line on the backlog that shows what may fit in coming sprints. No date and no likelihood.
- Try it
See a Feature’s stories across the whole board
Pick a Feature and its stories light up in every column, joined to it by lines. Features sit beside the board, grouped by Epic.
In Azure DevOps: The board shows stories one by one. To see which belong to one Feature, you open them or switch to the backlog.
- Try it
Change a story’s parent by dragging it on the board
Drop a story card onto another Feature. The parent link changes at once; no form to open.
In Azure DevOps: Open the story and edit its parent link, or drag it in the backlog’s mapping pane. Not on the board.
- Try it
Column rules that stop a bad move, and fix it on the spot
“Ready needs a description”, “Active needs a task”, “Only the product owner may close it”. A move that breaks a rule stops and offers to add what is missing right there.
In Azure DevOps: A column’s definition of done is a note. Nothing checks it, and nothing stops the move.
- Try it
Search that keeps the tree
Search the backlog and every match keeps its Epic and Feature around it, so you see where it belongs.
In Azure DevOps: A filtered backlog drops the parents around each match.
- Try it
Recurring stories that make themselves
Write the weekly review, the sprint kick-off or the release checklist once, as a schedule with tasks and an owner who can rotate. The stories appear in the right sprint and column.
In Azure DevOps: Nothing built in. Teams copy stories by hand or build a pipeline or a Logic App for it.
- Try it
A dependency map: what is blocked, and by what
All “waits for” links as a graph, with a list of what is blocked right now and loops flagged. Filter it to one sprint, one person or one tag.
In Azure DevOps: Dependency lines on a Delivery Plan’s timeline. No list of what is blocked now and no check for loops.
- Try it
A roadmap that says what will be late
Epics and Features on a timeline with sprints and dependency arrows. Each gets a “likely done by” date from your pace, red when it will probably miss its target. Other teams can sit in their own rows.
In Azure DevOps: Delivery Plans place work by its dates or sprints. They do not forecast when it will really be done.
- Try it
Pull request times for your team
How long your team’s pull requests wait for their first approval and take to merge, week by week, and which ones wait on whom right now.
In Azure DevOps: No built-in report of pull request times per team.
- Try it
Health checks with the fix one click away
Work in progress with no owner, done work with open children, stale stories, Features without a parent: found for you, each with Assign, Open or Hide next to it.
In Azure DevOps: Write a query for each problem yourself, run it, and fix each item in its form.
- Try it
Urgency you can see on every story
Five small bars on each card, lit like a phone’s charge: how important it is, how long it waits, how near its sprint’s end and its deadline are, and what waits for it. The team sets what counts.
In Azure DevOps: A priority number, set by hand. Nothing shows what is getting late.
- Try it
A story map
Features across the top and one row per sprint. Drag a card down a row to move it, with its open tasks, to that sprint.
In Azure DevOps: No story map built in.
- Try it
Strategy: from goals to the work
Your goals (pillars) with their Epics and Features, and the work closed under each one month by month. Add or change pillars right on the page.
In Azure DevOps: Nothing ties Epics to goals or shows where the effort went.
- Try it
Sprint end in one click
One button moves the unfinished stories and their open tasks to the next sprint, or splits a story: its open tasks go to a copy in the next sprint, its finished work stays.
In Azure DevOps: Move the stories by hand or with bulk edit. No split.
- Try it
Tag tidying
Merge, rename, delete or colour a tag across all work items at once.
In Azure DevOps: Change each item’s tags by hand or with bulk edit.
And a lot more on the same page
- Retros with anonymous notes and votes, and planning poker, on the same page.
- Sprint planning with capacity and days off, burndown, and a one-page sprint report.
- A calendar with sprints, target dates and people’s days off.
- Split a story in half, or make a follow-up story, in one click.
- A recycle bin that restores many items at once.
Free, and safe to try
It reads and writes work items and reads pull requests, never your code. Your data stays in Azure DevOps.