As you might have noticed from some of my previous posts on this blog, I really like reports. I wrote about how to customize them (here, here and here), how you should use them in your ALM implementation and how to use PowerPivot to your advantage.

When you read these posts, you probably will not be very surprised that I am very excited about the reporting stuff that is currently happening on VSO.

It was already possibly to make simple charts from Flat Lists Queries. This charting functionality allows you to visualize a query as a chart and pin it to your homepage. This process is very well described on MSDN.

 

But now…Since the update as of July 21st, it is possible to have some more advanced charts. Meaning charts that use another measure as Count of Work Items, and charts that display a trend.

You can think of examples as:

• Bug count over the last 4 weeks
• Number of hours remaining in the current sprint (burndown !)
• Cumulative flow (number of storypoints over time in a specific state)
• etc.

Walkthrough

Let me quickly guide you through a simple scenario to create a cumulative flow diagram for Product Backlog Items.

Create some items

First create some PBI’s and assign a value in the Effort field

Create a work item query

Create a query (Flat List) that lists all Product Backlog Items and make sure you add [Effort] in the output columns.

Save the query in the [Shared Queries] Folder and call it [Cumulative Flow PBI]

Create a chart

Create a chart by clicking the [Charts] sub Tab. Create a Stacked Area, group by State and select Sum of Effort as Values field.

Pin to homepage

Once you created your chart, you can pin the chart to your homepage by clicking the […] and choose Pin to homepage.

That’s it. This is very cool stuff and sure there is more to come !

Happy charting!