In Part 1, we covered how Nooga Portfolio connects OKRs to team-level work and surfaces initiatives that aren't tied to any strategic objective. This second part goes deeper into the operational side: how Nooga Scale manages dependencies across teams, makes risks visible from team level to strategic objective, and shows whether delivery activity is actually translating into outcome progress.
This blog is sourced from a recorded webinar. Prefer to watch instead? The full webinar recording is available here:
Cross-Team Dependency Management: From Sticky Notes to a Live System
Cross-team dependencies are one of the most operationally painful aspects of scaled delivery, regardless of framework. Most organizations manage them manually: spreadsheets, planning walls, or a dedicated person whose job is to keep track. Cprime's John Kosco noted that this is common enough that many organizations he's consulted with have hired a full-time or part-time person just to manage dependencies. When planning cycles end, that information goes stale, and dependencies discovered late become the blockers nobody saw coming.
Nooga Scale replaces manual dependency tracking with a live system built directly on Azure DevOps native work item relationships, no separate tool, no export, no reconciliation needed.
How dependency management works in Nooga Scale:
- Visual dependency arrows on the planning board: green means correctly sequenced; red means a dependency is scheduled out of order. Teams see it immediately and can resolve it during the planning session rather than discovering it mid-delivery
- Filter to dependencies only: hide all non-dependency cards to focus planning discussions on exactly what needs to be resolved before the period begins
- Dependency requests with a digital handshake: one team formally requests that another deliver something by a specific iteration. The requested team accepts or declines. When accepted, a work item is created on the requested team's board, which they then need to plan into a sprint to fulfill the commitment
- Late dependency tracking: commitments that haven't been honored are flagged automatically, surfacing them for cross-team syncs and coordination discussions
- Flexible dependency scope: links can be created between any work items across any teams or delivery groups within the ADO organization, regardless of how those groups are structured
As SAI's Rebecca put it after seeing this: "I just have a bunch of leaders saying we have dependencies everywhere and everything is awful. Let's at least give me reality so I can see what awful actually means." That's exactly what this view provides.
Portfolio Risk Visibility: From Team Level to Strategic Objective
Risks identified during planning tend to stay at the team level, logged, discussed, and then lost to the people who most need to act on them. Nooga makes those risks visible at every level above the team, connected to the strategic outcomes they threaten.
Two risk configurations depending on your Nooga setup: If you use Nooga Scale standalone (without the separate Nooga Risk extension), risks are managed on a board during planning and connected to work or objectives. Adding the Nooga Risk extension unlocks the full risk matrix at portfolio and enterprise level, rolling up from execution all the way to strategic objectives. The demo showed the latter. We did not have time to show every detail in the webinar, If you are curious about the features of Nooga Risk and would like to see how it fits into your own case, please visit nooga.net/risk or book a demo.
The risk matrix per initiative shows:
- All risks connected to that initiative and all its child work items, features and stories (team-level tasks), pulled from the execution level upward into one consolidated view
- Risk scores with severity flags, immediately identifying which risks are critical and unmitigated, so discussions focus on what actually matters rather than an exhaustive list
- The strategic objective this initiative serves, so risk conversations stay grounded in business impact, not just delivery mechanics
The predictability score:
Each initiative carries a predictability score, visible in the top-right corner of the epic view. It indicates whether the team is able to deliver value as planned, combining four signals drawn directly from Azure DevOps data: schedule adherence (are we on time?), scope adherence (is the content changing?), unmitigated risks, and dependency complexities. As John Kosco noted, this gives leaders an objective basis for knowing which conversations to have before a miss becomes a surprise, rather than being told at review time that a commitment won't land.
OKR Pace: Are You Delivering Work, or Actually Moving the Needle?
This was the last capability Nooga's Michael showed in the demo, and the one that most directly answers the question leaders care about: are we actually making progress on our strategic objectives, or are we just busy?
In the demo, one portfolio OKR, aimed at lifting app store ratings from 4.2 to 4.7 by inspiring users to rate the app more quickly, showed the following picture: 34% progress on a key result that should have been at 89% given the elapsed time in the period. Six active epics (large initiatives) and multiple delivery teams were running against it. Teams were busy. Work was being completed. But the outcome wasn't moving.
As Michael put it: "We're doing a lot of work, but we're not pushing the needle." In the same view, leaders can see:
- Investment volume: how many epics and teams are working against this objective
- OKR pace status: where the key result metric actually stands versus where it should be at this point in the period
- Execution status: what is complete, in flight, and planned across all connected delivery work
This is the distinction that portfolio management is built to surface: the difference between output completion and outcome delivery. If you are only measuring whether work is getting done, you may be optimizing delivery in the wrong direction. Nooga puts both signals in the same place, so leaders don't have to choose between operational detail and strategic perspective. The work is already in Azure DevOps. The visibility just hasn't been there yet.
See Portfolio Visibility in Azure DevOps Live
If your organization runs scaled delivery in Azure DevOps, and you want a real-time, traceable view from strategic objectives to team-level work, Nooga Portfolio and Nooga Scale extensions are worth exploring.
- Book a personalized demo with the Nooga team
- Start a free trial on the Visual Studio Marketplace
- Watch the full webinar replay
About the Contributors
Michael Ginart is a Product Lead at Nooga, where he shapes the roadmap for Nooga Portfolio, and Scaled Agile Tooling built natively on Azure DevOps.
John Kosco is a Senior Consultant at Cprime with 30+ years of experience in agile transformation, portfolio management, and delivery across aerospace, healthcare, financial, and energy sectors.
Rebecca Davis is a SAFe Fellow and Framework Team member at Scaled Agile, specializing in portfolio management and scaled agile competency development. She hosted and facilitated this webinar session, playing the role of a senior executive to bring the challenges to life.
