Connected roadmap planning in Monday.com directly to engineering delivery in Azure DevOps, replacing two systems telling two different stories with one live planning view.
→ Monday.com and Azure DevOps integrated as a single, live planning view.
Problem
The product roadmap in Monday.com and engineering delivery tasks in Azure DevOps had no connection between them, so the roadmap was always a step behind what engineering was actually doing.
Context
This was part of the wider Fortescue delivery rebuild, where connecting these two systems was one of the structural fixes needed before the roadmap could be trusted.
Business objective
Create a single source of truth that connected business-facing roadmap planning directly to engineering delivery, without adding process overhead for either side.
Customer/user objective
Stakeholders needed one reliable view of where things stood, rather than having to check two systems and reconcile the difference themselves.
Constraints
The fix had to work without adding extra manual steps for engineers or product staff, since anything that felt like overhead risked being abandoned within weeks.
Stakeholders
Product stakeholders relying on the roadmap, engineering teams working in Azure DevOps, and the agency, all of whom needed the convention to be used consistently to keep the two systems aligned.
Research and discovery
I mapped the relationship between roadmap items in Monday.com and work items in Azure DevOps, to understand exactly where the gaps and mismatches were.
Options considered
I considered a manual weekly reconciliation process versus a structural fix, a consistent naming and tagging convention plus configuration so Monday.com reflected Azure DevOps status directly. I chose the structural fix, since manual reconciliation was the exact problem already failing.
Prioritisation
Getting the naming and tagging convention right came first, since neither the configuration nor the weekly sync would hold without a reliable way to cross-reference items between the two systems.
Delivery
I introduced a consistent naming and tagging convention across both systems, configured Monday.com to reflect status directly from Azure DevOps, and established a weekly sync to keep them aligned, then trained the team and the agency on the new approach.
Decisions made
The decision to configure an automated status reflection, rather than rely on people to manually update both systems, was what made the fix durable rather than another process that would lapse.
Trade-offs
Introducing the convention took upfront training time across the team and the agency. I judged that worthwhile against the ongoing cost of manual reconciliation it replaced.
Business outcome
Stakeholders had a live view of delivery progress against the roadmap for the first time, rather than two systems telling two different stories.
Customer outcome
Stakeholders could trust the roadmap reflected real engineering status without needing to double-check against Azure DevOps separately.
Lessons learned
Manual reconciliation between two systems is a symptom, not a fix. Connecting the systems structurally removes the problem rather than managing it.
What I'd improve today
I would introduce the naming and tagging convention before either system had accumulated much history, since retrofitting it onto existing items took longer than applying it from the start would have.
