Display work items from one project on another project's Kanban board in Azure DevOps

Hi Besi,

Thank you for reaching out. Natively, Azure DevOps does not support displaying work items from one project on another project's Kanban board. This is because Kanban boards and backlogs are strictly scoped to a specific team within a single project.

However, there are official solutions and extensions you can implement to achieve cross-project visibility:

1. Query Based Boards Extension (Recommended for Kanban View) If you specifically need a board view, the official workaround is to use a marketplace extension. As explicitly stated in the Microsoft Cross-project FAQs:

Can I view a board of work items defined in different projects? "Yes. The Query Based Boards Marketplace extension supports this feature. You can view a board view of a flat-list query of work items."

Extension Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=realdolmen.EdTro-AzureDevOps-Extensions-QueryBasedBoards-Public

Note: This is a third-party extension and is not developed or maintained by Microsoft.

Steps:

1. Install the Extension: Go to the Azure DevOps Marketplace and install the Query Based Boards extension to your organization.
2. Create a Cross-Project Query:
   • Navigate to Project > Boards > Queries > New Query.
   • Set the parameters (e.g., Work Item Type = User Story).
   • Crucial Step: Check the "Query across projects" checkbox in the top right corner of the query editor.
   • Run the query to verify that work items from both project like Story A and Story B appear in the list.
   • Save the query under Shared Queries.
3. In Editor tab of queries, you will see another tab - Show as Board.

Reference for configuration of extension: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tod0S2QXO-E

2. Delivery Plans (Timeline View) If your goal is to track cross-team work on a timeline, Delivery Plans natively support this feature. According to the Gain visibility across teams documentation:

"Delivery Plans support a view of team backlogs on a calendar timeline. With Delivery Plans, you create a timeline view that overlays multiple teams' backlogs—stories, features, or epics—onto a delivery schedule."

Displaying the same work items from Project A directly on Project B’s native Kanban board isn’t supported. Each team board is scoped to the team’s project, area path, and iteration paths.

However, there are supported ways to get cross-project views without duplicating work items:

1. Delivery Plans (native, cross-project)
   Delivery Plans provide a calendar/timeline view of work across multiple teams and projects:
   • Can show up to 20 team backlogs from different projects in one plan.
   • Visualizes scheduled work items by sprint/iteration across projects.
   • Supports rollup progress and dependency visualization between work items.
     This gives a cross-project planning/roadmap view, but not a Kanban board with columns.
   See: Use team delivery plans in Azure Boards.
2. Query-based cross-project views + extension board
   Azure Boards queries can span projects within an organization. To get a board-like view:
   • Create a flat list query that returns work items from Project A (and optionally others).
   • Install and use the Query Based Boards Marketplace extension, which can render a board view over that query, including items from multiple projects.
   This is the recommended workaround to approximate a cross-project Kanban board without duplicating items.
3. Other visualization options
   For schedule/dependency visualization across projects (not Kanban):
   • Delivery Plans for roadmap/timeline and dependencies.
   • Dependency Tracker and Gantt-style Marketplace extensions for portfolio-level roadmaps and dependency management.

There is no native feature to have Project A’s work items appear on Project B’s standard Kanban board, but Delivery Plans plus the Query Based Boards extension provide supported cross-project views without copying work items.

References:

• Cross-project FAQs
• Work across projects
• Azure Boards FAQs
• Delivery Plans 2.0 is now in preview
• Use team delivery plans in Azure Boards
• Azure DevOps dashboards and charts FAQs