Blocker Buddy

Blocker Buddy turns "we have a lot of blockers" into measured data.

It's faster and easier than opening the work item to add a tag manually, and it captures more — the category and duration of each blocked period.

Blocker Buddy answers the question your retros keep circling: not just what was blocked or what is blocked, but which category of blockers eats up the most time.

Install. Add to team dashboard. One click. Show your team the easy way to mark blockers. A few days later, you have data that was invisible before.

Two components are provided: a context-menu action to toggle an item between blocked and unblocked, and a dashboard widget that shows blocker activity by category over time — current count, total time blocked, and per-category breakdown with sparklines.

• One-click bootstrap — six blocker categories ready to add to any team, or curate your own.
• Total time, not just count — the breakdown sorts by total duration, so the longest-duration blockers (not the most-common ones) get attention first.
• Honors your existing data — items already tagged Blocked appear in the widget.
• Native ADO team-rollup — honors each team's configured area paths including subtree settings, so an umbrella team's dashboard can show blockers from every sub-team automatically.
• Theme-aware — light and dark modes track your Azure DevOps theme; no per-widget setting needed.
• Custom work item types — works with any work item type your process template defines (PBI, Bug, Task, Feature, Production Issue, Tech Chore — anything).
• Right-click to copy as TSV — per-category or whole-timeframe blocker history, paste-ready for Excel or Google Sheets.

Created by AgileViz. The plugins each do one thing well — simplicity is a feature, not an oversight.

Documentation and support

Full documentation, configuration guide, and support: AgileViz.com/plugins/blocker-buddy/