VSTS How to manage workitems and backlog with single team project

Question

Our small team works on a dozen or more apps and databases. Im going through the docs and have already setup a single team project after reading several sources that mention this being the preferred way rather than multiple team projects. Each application has its own Git repo.

Now Im wondering how to manage setting up sprints and a backlog. For us, a given sprint might include tasks on more than one application.

Questions:

• How can I organize the backlog without actually adding the workitem to a sprint? Dragging the items around in the list to set priority might be good enough.
• If I setup different teams, can each team have its own backlog and set of sprints?
• Say I wanted to add a consultant as a resource, how can they be permitted to access only a single Git repo and no others?

Answer 1

How can I organize the backlog without actually adding the workitem to a sprint? Dragging the items around in the list to set priority might be good enough.

Each team has a "Backlog Iteration" and one or more selected "sprint iterations". When these aren't shared between teams, they are orderable.

If I setup different teams, can each team have its own backlog and set of sprints?

Yes, though they will be able to query the items from other teams as well. Separating teams is done by assigning one or more areas to each team. The recommendation is to not have teams assigned to the same area at the same time. That will cause all kinds of interesting ordering issues, because basically the same items are then visible on two backlogs.

Say I wanted to add a consultant as a resource, how can they be permitted to access only a single Git repo and no others?

The default security setting for Git Repositories is that the creator gets full permission and contributors get contribute permissions. You'll need to edit the top level repository permissions to remove contributor there. This is a pretty hidden setting:

That way you can control exactly who can access which repository. Depending on other settings (like See project information) they may be able to see the repositories exist, but they won't be able to access them.