Concepts

Why the board behaves the way it does. Not tasks. Read these when something surprised you.

A board is a view of a query, and a query is not a team, a project or a backlog level. Almost everything that looks unexpected follows from that one difference, plus a second rule the product holds to everywhere: nothing the query returned is ever silently dropped. If an item cannot be placed, it is parked somewhere visible and counted; if a number cannot be trusted, it says so.

The pages

• Why a column dims while you drag: the board asks Azure DevOps whether your process rules would accept the state, for this item and for you, before you drop it.
• Why some items sit in Unmapped: columns come from one work item type's state model, so anything that maps to no column is parked at the right rather than hidden.
• Why rejected work is hidden but counted: removed-category items leave the board exactly as they do on a native board, with a visible count above it and the full result still in the List view.
• What the rollup counts, and what it excludes: the requirement level, the per-level breakdown, the four exclusion reasons and the caps behind a trailing +.
• Why AnyKanban never writes to someone else's backlog: cards link to existing backlog work as Related only, never as its parent or child: no checkboxes on Related items, nothing destructive in another team's process, and the backlog's order changes only on a board where someone turned that on. A card that is itself a backlog item can still create a brand-new child beneath it.
• Why some things need a field of your own: every column stands on a state; several columns over one state need a text field and split columns a boolean field of your own, never the hidden WEF_ board fields (a board filed under a team can follow that team's own board instead), and an administrator can add those fields on the Fields tab of the organization settings page.
• Why percentiles instead of averages: cycle times are not distributed symmetrically, so an average sits where no item is and moves on every straggler; what p50, p70, p85 and p95 mean, why p95 waits until thirty items have closed, and what the board does when there is too little history to say anything honest.
• Which version you are running, and how updates reach you: where an administrator reads the version, how Azure DevOps applies an update without anyone installing it, and how to receive new versions sooner.

If you came looking for steps

These pages explain; they do not instruct. For setting a board up see Prerequisites, and for day-to-day use see the User Guide.