Portfolio++ for Azure Boards

Build Roadmaps across your Project Areas with the Portfolio++ extension!

Create a single page view that shows the status of related Project Areas, Epics and Features, with a quality check view that flags missing story points, tasks, and task sizing.

Portfolio++ is built specifically for Enterprise teams, Program and Project Managers. We built it for ourselves to help our technology solution delivery teams deliver. It’s been a game changer for us, and we hope it is useful for you too.

We are actively iterating on this project—and we greatly appreciate the feedback we have received from this community. We continue to release new features, and your feedback helps us prioritize our work.

Major Features

• Supports Projects that use the Agile or Scrum Process Templates
• Build Roadmaps that show Epics and Features in timeline views across Project Areas
• Configure Roadmap views through the Settings Panel
• Enables Roadmap drill-throughs into Project Area Epic/Feature Timelines
• Wide Epic/Feature Timeline iteration plans can be limited with start and stop date filters
• All timeline views can be switched between ‘Generated’, showing work in iterations (Actuals), or ‘Manual', based on Epic/Feature Start Dates and Target Dates (Planning)
• Improves Backlog quality through context sensitive error messages

Create a Roadmap

Click ‘Add Roadmap’ to get started.

Define your Roadmap

Add Projects and Epics to your Roadmap. Create as many Roadmap views as your teams need. Select which Projects and Epics show up to provide project visibility without clutter.

See Epics across Project Areas in one location

Show Progress Metrics

You can change which progress metrics show on your Roadmap. Show Story Counts and use the Roadmap view for high-level discussions of team progress. Or Story Points and Task Counts for daily stand-ups. This view shows all three selected.

Enhanced Epic/Feature Timeline

Access the Team's Epic/Feature Timeline view directly from their Backlog Tab. Use filters to reduce the width of long running Iteration Paths. Choose which metrics to display on progress bars.

Quality Check

Stop clicking through each Project Area's Backlog to make sure Stories or Product Backlog Items have Story Points or Effort, are decomposed into Tasks, and that Tasks have hours. The Epic Status view highlights these challenges and gives you a “drill-through” button click to the show the Stories and Tasks of concern, so teams can fix issues quickly.

Configuration Details

• Requirements
  • Project Organization Administrator is required to install Portfolio++
  • Portfolio++ requires Azure DevOps Services
  • Users need Analytics permissions; please refer to this document
  • Azure DevOps Organization settings for Boards/Process should be Agile or Scrum
• Constraints
  • Roadmaps cannot cross Project Organizations -Roadmap permissions are managed through Azure DevOps Organization Settings, User Roles, Team affiliations, and - oject Area access, i.e. if you have access to all the Project Areas in a Roadmap, then you can see it
  • In the Settings dialog, selecting ‘Manual’ requires that each Epic and Feature’s Start Date and Target Dates be - fined, and ‘Generated’ requires that at least one Epic or Feature’s User Stories (Agile), or Product Backlog - ems (Scrum), have been pulled into an Iteration.
• Recommendations (Roadmaps work better when...)
  • All work items are “parented” up to an Epic
  • Refrain from type "nesting"; i.e. Epics that are children of Epics
  • User Stories (Agile), or Product Backlog Items (Scrum) that are in Iterations should have Points
  • Tasks in Iterations should have hours

Documentation and Help

Watch demo videos and learn about best practices with Portfolio++ on the iTrellis product page

Release Notes and new Feature requests

We are actively adding features to Portfolio++, please help us by submitting bug and feature requests. We are excited to hear great ideas on improvements from the community, many of which are in the releases below. Please reach out to us here.

11/6/2020 Release Notes

• 3045: As a user, I want to be able to view the Epic/Feature timeline as a tab in the Team's backlogs view.

10/16/2020 Release Notes

• 3023: As a user I want to be able to use Portfolio++ with the Scrum Process Template

10/9/2020 Release Notes

• 3015: As a user, I want Portolio++ to add support for Azure Devop Server 2019
• 3028: As a user, I want Portolio++ to add browser support for Edge 44 and later releases

9/25/2020 Release Notes

• 2731: As a user, I want the Roadmap Directory to use familiar Azure Devops Projects page layout and behavior
• 2738: As a user, I want to mark Roadmaps I created as private so only I can see them
• 2671: As a user, I want to understand the EULA and Privacy Statement for Portfolio++
• 2662: As a user, to the extent possible, I want to use standard forward and backward browser navigation in the extension
• 2765: As a user, I don’t want to see cards behind the headers when scrolling vertically
• 2806: As a user, I want Roadmap views and Epic Status to load faster
• 2811: As a user, on the Epic Status tab, I do not want to see a green check indicator on “empty Epics” with no work items defined

9/8/2020 Release Notes

• 2806: As a user I want the Timeline and Epic Status views to load faster
• 2811: As a user I don't want to see a green check next to the Epic if there are no child work items defined
• 2765: As a user I don't want to see the cards in the Timelines behind the headers when scrolling vertically
• 2895: As a user, I want to see the User Story Modal utilize the maximum width of the screen.
• 2662: As a user I want to be able to use standard browser navigation in the extension