Work tracking in large organizations is often messy. Teams use disconnected tools, manage overlapping backlogs, and struggle with permissions or visibility.
Azure Boards — part of the Azure DevOps platform — offers a flexible, enterprise-grade solution to structure and manage all your work. Whether you're running Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or hybrid models, Azure Boards provides clarity, traceability, and governance for engineering and business teams alike.
In this blog, we’ll explain:
- The difference between Organizations and Projects
- How Boards function across teams and structures
- Work item hierarchy: Epics, Features, User Stories, Tasks, Bugs
- How permissions work across Projects and Teams
- Pros, cons, and limitations
- Licensing and cost considerations for scaling across the enterprise
Azure DevOps: Organizations vs Projects
Before diving into Boards, you need to understand how Azure DevOps structures its environment.
Organization
- The top-level container in Azure DevOps.
- You’ll typically have one Organization per company or major business unit.
- Each Organization holds one or more Projects.
- Centralized user management, billing, policies, and agent pools apply at this level.
When to use multiple Organizations:
Rarely. Only use multiple Orgs if you have fully separate legal entities or completely isolated teams with different governance needs. Otherwise, managing across Organizations creates silos and overhead.
Project
- A container within the Organization for work tracking, repos, pipelines, etc.
- A Project has its own Boards, Teams, Permissions, and Dashboards.
- You can manage multiple teams under one Project using Area Paths.
Pros of using fewer Projects:
- Easier to report across teams
- Shared templates, boards, and configurations
- Simplified user and permission management
Cons of too many Projects:
- Work is isolated
- Reporting and portfolio views become fragmented
- Configuration duplication across Projects
Best practice:
Use one Project per major product or functional portfolio, and scale within it using Teams and Areas. Avoid creating a new Project for every small initiative.
How Azure Boards Work
Azure Boards is a work tracking system built to support Agile practices — but customizable to almost any methodology.
Here’s how it’s structured:
Work Item Hierarchy
- Epics – Highest-level business objectives (multi-quarter goals)
- Features – Functional components of an Epic (multi-sprint deliverables)
- User Stories – End-user needs that define functionality
- Tasks – Step-by-step work assigned to individuals
- Bugs – Defects or issues tracked alongside work
Each item type has:
- State transitions (e.g., New → Active → Resolved → Closed)
- Assigned owners
- Effort estimation
- Tags, links, attachments
- Full audit trail and history
Boards & Backlogs
- Boards show your work items in a Kanban view by team.
- Backlogs give a prioritized list, filtered by Epics, Features, or Stories.
- Sprints and Iterations allow you to define time-boxed periods for delivery.
Boards are team-specific, but all data rolls up to the Project level. You can also set custom swimlanes, WIP limits, and card styles per team.
Permissions & Team Management in Azure Boards
Azure DevOps offers robust permission controls at every level.
Permission Scope Options:
- Organization-level: Manage who can create Projects, invite users, view billing
- Project-level: Grant read/write/contributor/admin access to code, boards, pipelines
- Area Paths: Restrict work item visibility or ownership to specific teams
- Iteration Paths: Manage access to sprint planning and velocity tracking
Teams in Azure DevOps:
- A Team is a logical unit inside a Project
- Each Team gets its own Board, Backlog, and Dashboards
- Teams can have custom area paths or shared iterations
- Members can belong to multiple teams if needed
Tip: Use Teams + Area Paths for scale. Don’t create a new Project for each team.
Licensing and Pricing
Azure DevOps pricing is transparent:
- First 5 users in any Organization are free
- Basic License: $6 USD/month per user
- Full access to Boards, Repos, Pipelines, and basic test plans
- Stakeholder License: Free
- Can create/view work items and participate in discussions (limited capabilities)
- Basic + Test Plans: $52 USD/month per user
- Needed for advanced QA/test planning modules
Storage & pipelines pricing applies separately based on usage (e.g., hosted build minutes, artifact storage).
Pro tip: Stakeholder access is perfect for business users who just need to log requests, track items, or view progress — no need to pay for full licenses.
Pros and Cons of Azure Boards
Pros:
- Deep integration with code, pipelines, and releases
- Flexible work item hierarchy
- Fully customizable workflows and fields
- Role-based security and auditability
- Strong reporting, dashboards, and Power BI connectivity
- No “per board” costs — scale as needed within a Project
Cons:
- Can get complex without clear naming conventions and team structure
- Requires time to configure correctly (especially large orgs)
- UI is less “modern” than some newer tools like Jira or Monday
- No out-of-the-box time tracking (needs extension or 3rd-party)
Conclusion
Azure Boards gives enterprise organizations the power to track work with structure, clarity, and scale. Whether you're running dozens of teams or aligning business initiatives to delivery pipelines, the flexibility and governance of Azure Boards is hard to beat.
At HarjTech, we help organizations:
- Architect their Azure DevOps structure (Orgs → Projects → Teams)
- Build standardized backlogs and workflows
- Set up security and Area Paths for governance
- Enable dashboards and Power BI views for leadership
- Train teams on best practices and velocity tracking
Need help structuring your Azure Boards environment for scale and clarity? Let’s build it right — and make work visible.
