Exposing Organization Metrics in Azure DevOps to a Dashboard: A Step-by-Step Guide

As an organization, having visibility into your development team’s performance is crucial to making data-driven decisions. Azure DevOps provides a wealth of metrics and data, but unlocking its full potential requires exposing these metrics to a dashboard. In this article, we’ll explore how to do just that, providing a step-by-step guide to help you unlock the power of organization metrics in Azure DevOps.

Why Expose Organization Metrics?

Before we dive into the “how,” let’s cover the “why.” Exposing organization metrics in Azure DevOps to a dashboard offers several benefits:

• Improved visibility: A dashboard provides a single source of truth, enabling stakeholders to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and make informed decisions.

• Enhanced collaboration: By exposing metrics, teams can collaborate more effectively, identify areas for improvement, and drive change.

• Data-driven decision-making: With real-time metrics, you can make data-driven decisions, rather than relying on intuition or anecdotal evidence.

• Customization: A dashboard allows you to tailor your metrics to your organization’s specific needs, providing a personalized view of performance.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, ensure you have the following:

• An Azure DevOps organization with at least one project.

• Adequate permissions to create and manage dashboards in Azure DevOps.

• Familiarity with Azure DevOps and its functionality.

Step 1: Enable Analytics

To expose organization metrics, you’ll need to enable Analytics in Azure DevOps. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your Azure DevOps organization and select the project you want to work with.

2. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner and select Organization settings.

3. Scroll down to the Analytics section and toggle the switch to On.

4. Click Save to save your changes.

Note: Enabling Analytics may take some time, depending on the size of your organization and the amount of data to process.

Step 2: Create a Dashboard

With Analytics enabled, it’s time to create a dashboard to display your organization metrics:

1. Navigate to your Azure DevOps organization and select the project you want to work with.

2. Click on the Dashboards tab in the top navigation menu.

3. Click on the New dashboard button.

4. Enter a name and description for your dashboard, then click Create.

Step 3: Add Widgets

A dashboard is only as useful as the widgets it contains. Let’s add some widgets to display our organization metrics:

1. Click on the Add widget button on your dashboard.

2. Search for the Analytics widget and select it.

3. Configure the widget by selecting the metric you want to display, such as Velocity or Cycle time.

4. Click Add to add the widget to your dashboard.

Repeat this process to add additional widgets, such as:

• Burn down chart to track progress against a sprint goal.

• Lead time chart to monitor the time it takes for issues to move from creation to completion.

• Deployment frequency chart to track the rate of deployments.

Step 4: Configure Widget Settings

To get the most out of your widgets, you’ll need to configure their settings:

1. Hover over a widget and click on the three dots that appear.

2. Select Configure from the dropdown menu.

3. Configure the widget settings as desired, such as selecting the data range, aggregation, and filters.

4. Click Save to save your changes.

Tip: Experiment with different settings to find the configuration that works best for your organization.

Step 5: Share Your Dashboard

Once you’ve created and configured your dashboard, it’s time to share it with stakeholders:

1. Click on the Share button on your dashboard.

2. Select the Copy link option.

3. Share the link with stakeholders via email, chat, or other collaboration tools.

Note: Ensure stakeholders have the necessary permissions to view the dashboard.

Advanced Configuration Options

For advanced users, Azure DevOps offers additional configuration options to further customize your dashboard:

External Data Sources

Integrate external data sources, such as SQL Server or Excel files, to enrich your dashboard with additional metrics:

1. Navigate to the Data sources tab in your dashboard.

2. Click on the New data source button.

3. Select the data source type and follow the configuration instructions.

Custom Calculations

Create custom calculations to derive new metrics from existing data:

1. Navigate to the Calculations tab in your dashboard.

2. Click on the New calculation button.

3. Define the calculation using the formula editor.

Data Transformation

Remember to explore the wealth of metrics available in Azure DevOps to create a comprehensive dashboard that meets your organization's unique needs.