{"id":23161,"date":"2026-04-16T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=23161"},"modified":"2026-06-10T16:33:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T23:33:49","slug":"reclaiming-engineering-time-with-ai-in-azure-devops-at-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/reclaiming-engineering-time-with-ai-in-azure-devops-at-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"Reclaiming engineering time with AI in Azure DevOps at Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At Microsoft Digital, the company\u2019s IT organization, we\u2019re reimagining how engineers, product managers, and program managers work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft Azure DevOps (ADO) is our company\u2019s end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC) solution for planning, coding, testing, and delivery. It combines tools for work tracking, source control, pipelines, and artifacts so teams can manage the entire SDLC in one environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although ADO excels at streamlining the development process, we found that users were still spending significant time performing repetitive administrative tasks, like creating and breaking down work items, writing and managing queries for reporting, and reclaiming lost permissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Engineering Systems Platform team successfully embedded AI into ADO, resulting in ADO experiences that replace manual workflows and free up our IT professionals to concentrate on work that makes a real impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identifying the opportunity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Engineering Systems Platform team supports 15,000 active users across one of the largest ADO platforms at Microsoft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cWe saw the toll these processes took on users, whether they were compiling information or performing manual tasks. Even with automation, there was still an opportunity to give time back to engineers.\u201d<\/p>\nGopal Panigrahy, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Three years ago, the team began exploring opportunities to automate repetitive ADO tasks like creating and updating work items, navigating project data, gathering statuses, and breaking large initiatives into sprint-ready work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While they found ways to automate some of these tasks, they discovered decision-making and information synthesis still consumed valuable time and occasionally introduced some human errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe saw the toll these processes took on users, whether they were compiling information or performing manual tasks,\u201d says Gopal Panigrahy, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital. \u201cEven with automation, there was still an opportunity to give time back to engineers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding AI to ADO workflows<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

ADO spans a vast area at Microsoft, serving a wide range of enterprise use cases and personas. What these workers have in common is heavy workloads. With this in mind, different categories of ADO users expressed the desire for AI-powered experiences that could help streamline workflows and speed up day-to-day development tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As generative AI matured, our team explored whether they could embed AI technology inside ADO to act as a real-time assistant, handling administrative work and answering contextual questions using natural language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cWe saw it as a win-win experiment. If we could give engineers back in ADO, they could spend it building, not managing artifacts.\u201d<\/p>\nDebashis Sahoo, principal group engineering manager, Microsoft Digital<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The guiding principles of the experiment were simple: Stay in context and preserve user control while aligning with existing ADO permissions and processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That vision led to the creation of two complementary Microsoft Copilot agents: The DevOps Assistant and the AI Work Item Assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe saw it as a win-win experiment,\u201d says Debashis Sahoo, a principal group engineering manager in Microsoft Digital. \u201cIf we could give engineers time back in ADO, they could spend it building, not managing artifacts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this initiative distinctive is it brings AI closer to the core ADO product and its users. It allows for secure, confidential, and context-rich ADO data to be used safely for meaningful AI-powered experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DevOps Assistant offers conversational, in-context support<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

DevOps Assistant is a chat\u2011based experience present in the ADO user interface (UI). It\u2019s activated in a side panel where users can ask natural language questions to retrieve information, check project statuses, and run common DevOps actions without navigating away from their main ADO display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The DevOps Assistant enables cross-source discovery, which reduces context switching and discovery time and helps lower the cognitive load for engineers and product managers. By reducing the time it takes to switch contexts and search for information, the DevOps Assistant helps ADO users move faster and stay focused on product delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the hood, the DevOps Assistant is a constellation of specialized agents, each of which is focused on a different segment of the DevOps lifecycle:<\/p>\n\n\n\n