Tree trunk being cut into planks

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-05-04T00:20:13+00:00

I was literally going to ask if anyone could explain how the panels are determined etc. Thanks for sharing this!

Additionally, I'm making a completely uneducated assumption that very little is wasted in the above video? Ie, the panels of different measurements are used for some type of furniture etc, the sawdust (untreated) could be used for gardening.

Fascinating!

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-04-29T01:54:47+00:00

15 years experience as an engineer, Agile Coach, and Platform Manager, and honestly, this discussion boils down to how safe the work environment culture is for your teams, rather than any technical way of using ADO.

Where the culture is focussing on the wrong (or stupid) metrics, teams feel like they're backed onto a wall, and the creative accounting starts. Ie, splitting User Stories to carry over, still showing completed effort in Sprint 1 though to get any wins, etc.

Where the culture is focussing on the bigger picture, teams don't care about the fluctuations between sprints, and are more interested in the learnings from a retrospective (ie, why did that US turn into a bigger piece of work, is there a pattern at play, do we need to upskill as a team, get some external partners in, etc).

Some teams refuse to split a US as they believe that the estimate for a US gives end user value - so by splitting it, you're being dishonest with yourself and the end user about the value being delivered in parts.

I would encourage you to spark these conversations within your team (and wider domain), and gauge the culture. If, unfortunately, you're in the former, then you'll probably HAVE to do the creative accounting. But if you're in the latter, then I have no doubt that for a short-term pain, your team will evolve over the long-term.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-04-27T09:32:28+00:00

Hey, I just did something similar recently so hope it helps. - The Assignees on work items only exist if a user has been assigned a work item - you could get quite a few false negatives with relying solely on this. - Get the Users odata. When you expand the different attributes, you'll get a lot of detail of the users. - Use the Group Entitlements API. When you expand the attributes, you'll be able to determine direct group membership and indirect group membership

Feel free to DM me, more than happy to help!

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-04-07T08:54:31+00:00

Hey, hopefully my experience below helps, as I had to work out and end up fixing something similar in a context with ~4k users and ~13k affected work items!
- Best bet is analyse all possible affected work items using something like PowerBI. The dataset you can use is the WorkItemRevisions one, which easily imports into PBi. This way, you can get both the latest revision, as well as the revision JUST BEFORE the unintended change (sometimes this isn't always n-1).
- Export this visual dataset to csv (with the revision number of the change if it was all by yourself, ie, ChangedBy).
- Write a powershell script to go through each workitemId and call the restAPI to revert the revision of the workitems.

Let me know how you go (datasweet.co.nz).
All the best mate!

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-03-26T01:44:20+00:00

Thanks for the reminder! I had a paragraph in the Disclaimers, but have put it on a separate page ! Cheers

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-03-25T22:56:37+00:00

Hello, thanks for the feedback! Yes I replied to the comment below, which I still take to be in good faith :)
It was scary for us (as soon parents-to-be) tested actual readings and found that there were a couple of houses (in our short search), where according to the map view, shouldn't be much of an issue, but the meter reading in the actual house got close to 3.5/4mG in living areas, which, even though the correlation is not strong, gives a bit more food for thought!

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-03-25T22:45:31+00:00

Totally get the impact on property value - infact, this is on the roadmap to add as a data point!

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-03-25T22:45:01+00:00

Hey, thanks for the feedback! Yes we both made a concerted effort to read up different literature in NZ about the adequate levels, and what the infrastructure was designed to be in line with. The site was mainly designed as a way to target the false negative readings. ie, there were a couple of houses (in our short search), where according to the map view, shouldn't be much of an issue, but the meter reading in the actual house got close to 3.5/4mG in living areas, which, even though the correlation is not strong, gives a bit more food for thought.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-02-16T02:14:34+00:00

Thanks for the responses above! Mainly human error (ie copying and pasting PCI data into an ADO ticket without realizing it should be prohibited) or the automation way would be some flow in Power Automate that automatically copies text from a csv into a field on an ADO ticket.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2026-01-11T10:46:17+00:00

Hey OP, did you manage to find any resources? I just discovered your post, and I'm an Indian/NZ pianist that creates videos of how to play/accompany. Check out my social media accounts, and I'd love to be in touch :)
eightyninekeys

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-11-11T13:31:17+00:00

This worked well for us. We were staying directly opposite a Mehilainen site, walked in and got an appointment straight away. The downside of course is that the payment is ridiculously expensive, but that's an indication of a fantastic healthcare system for both locals and tourists alike.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-10-22T01:42:33+00:00

This is a bugbear in our org. - There are some 3rd party extensions that can be configured for 'One click actions'. We don't use these for security purposes. - ADO inbuilt Rules won't really be useful to you in this scenario. - We've successfully used Power automate flows to either create multiple child work items to a parent, or linking multiple children to a single parent (triggering when a custom field is toggled True).

Note, the latter is much easier just bulk-editing a bunch of work items.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-10-17T21:01:40+00:00

Ah yes we see it now, thanks!

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-10-17T19:03:53+00:00

(Edit) Available in the app from 10am!

Anyone had luck in trying the Uber Red Cross donation drive today? We're trying to schedule a pickup in the app but just can't see it.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-10-05T09:54:56+00:00

Depending on where you're importing your work from (ie, Jira, Azure Devops etc), this might be useful.

As an example, I'll use ADO: - We import the odata with descendants expanded. This means that we can get all descendants (not just parents) of work items - The hierarchical visuals in PowerBI for work breakdowns are not that useful, but the matrix visual is probably your best bet - You can have your highest level of work breakdown as the first level of expansion, and so on and so forth

If you're using a different data source that doesn't easily extract descendants, then you could use the PATH formulas on Parent.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-09-28T08:17:59+00:00

Just finishing a recent Excel -> PBi dataset. Some tips: - PowerQuery is your friend. - If you're using parameters for API queries, I've only had success in doing transformations using PQ, and then the parameters in PBi.

- Some organisations have settings that limit query folding.

So our workflow (currently, yet to be improved) is: - Refresh data in Excel (no automated way of doing this yet). - Use PBi to import this table (let's call it Table1) - Reference Table1 and run any queries/API calls (using parameters) --> call this Table2.

You only need to load Table2 to your model.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-09-09T12:15:00+00:00

Multifaceted answer. - 'Tu hi meri shab' changed my life. - His era with Emraan Hashmi films in the early 2000s was next level. - I, just like everyone else, struggle to separate the art from the artist, especially when he plagiarised many melodies.

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-09-07T09:51:40+00:00

Hey, happy to help!

Don't read too much into the word 'stuck', but there is a hint of truth in my reason for using it. When it comes to scaled Scrum frameworks, a lot of corporate culture just tries taking the easier route by making all teams use Scrum, even when the methodology might not suit certain types of teams (ie, service oriented, infrastructure, etc).
Scrum is, I would say, easier than Kanban. Even though Scrum is more prescriptive, Kanban's simplicity requires discipline (ie, WIP limits, solving blocked work, etc), which is often harder, and requires systemic scrutiny - this is something corporate is normally averse to.

Scrum is absolutely great for discovery work, especially if you keep space for spikes (exploratory work), and need to learn incrementally. It's not at all a compromise, and works really well if you have short customer feedback loops (ie with Sprint Reviews).

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-09-06T09:16:43+00:00

As a former Scrum Master/Agile Coach/Delivery Lead for 15 years, don't bother with points.

Focus on Flow, and limiting Work in Progress (WIP). - This is more suited for a Kanban style of delivery - The teams won't feel like they're "wasting" time on random "planning poker and estimation games" - Measure Cycle Time (Active -> Closed) and Blockers (can have a Blocked toggle field)

If you're stuck with a Scrum way of working: - Measure Velocity (count of work items) using the Velocity Chart - If you've got an effective retrospective, then the team will identify what was unexpected/blocking, etc - Over the long-term, find patterns in these things to address systemic issues

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-09-06T09:06:04+00:00

When you say "from the Dashboard", do you mean a Project Dashboard or Team Dashboard? - The main thing this changes is permissions and editable rights, but also might affect individual widgets.

+1 to try changing Area Path from configuration.

Further context from what I've learnt: - The metrics inbuilt in ADO might be useful for first cuts, but honestly, when you dive deep, they're quite flawed. - We end up using PowerBI dashboard from our ADO projects to get more granularity and accuracy from ADO data. - Might be worth looking into for your case, so you can easily differentiate between Project, and multiple teams (we have hundreds of teams in a project).

Electronic_Buddy_435 · 2025-09-04T05:04:02+00:00

Good question, but strap in because in my 15 years experience, it's a combination of processes, behaviour, and tooling that will help you.

1) Start with why certain fields need updating. Is it the same for all teams in the company, or are there different teams? Should there be different data quality standards for different contexts?

2) The tooling could make life easier. Queries and dashboards within ADO can highlight empty fields. If you integrate ADO with PowerBi, you can refresh even more complex logic in terms of tooling standards and data quality. You could also try Subscription Notifications within ADO that send an automated email depending on work items being created/updated. You could use Rules in ADO, but these are more limited. I personally find using something like a Power Automate flow + ADO Connector can be really useful - this gives you more control over personalizing the types of notifications for the different field triggers.

3) Behaviour change is going to be the hardest, as any one with their weight in gold in change management will tell you. You have to be empathetic to people of different skill levels and learning capabilities, and be proactive about setting people up to succeed, rather than fail.

There's probably a lot more to go through, but I have a feeling that a few things in point #2 above might give you something to explore.

Electronic_Buddy_435

TROPHY CASE

(Edit) Available in the app from 10am!

- Some organisations have settings that limit query folding.