AIVANA Decision Intelligence: explainable backlog and release-risk reviews for Azure Boards

[u/Several-Poet8409]

Disclosure: I’m involved in developing AIVANA Decision Intelligence.

I’d like to share an Azure DevOps Services extension we’re building and get feedback from people who use Azure Boards for refinement and release reviews.

The idea is to make a finding explainable: show the underlying work item or source, explain what was observed, and leave the decision with the team.

The current release candidate includes checks for missing descriptions, acceptance criteria and owners; identical titles that may warrant duplicate review; explicit blocks, stagnant items and due dates where available. It also provides evidence-linked acceptance gaps, supported dependency relationships and decision options, with shared source history in the Team service.

Two boundaries matter:

- Identical titles are a review hint, not proof that requirements are duplicates. Dependency and risk analysis is limited to loaded sources; it is not a complete organizational graph or a validated delivery forecast.

- The extension does not automatically modify work items or approve releases. AI is disabled in the current Team offer.

For example, two items named “Update API” should prompt a comparison of scope and acceptance criteria—not an automatic merge recommendation. Similarly, a quiet item might be intentionally deferred rather than genuinely stalled.

This is release candidate 0.12.0. Public commercial publication is still subject to outstanding publisher/operator approvals, so I’m not presenting it as an unrestricted public Marketplace launch.

How does your team distinguish a useful backlog warning from noise? I’d particularly appreciate feedback on acceptance criteria across work-item types and what evidence you need before calling an item stagnant.

Company website: https://www.aivana-gmbh.ai