Azure DevOps: Requiring Pull Requests to be Associated with a Work Item

Whether following Git Flow, GitHub Flow, GitLab Flow or Trunk-based Development certain policies are standard to source code best practices. For example. each Pull Request (PR) must be associated with a single task/story/epic (a linked work item). This post discusses Azure DevOps support for this feature.

For a given ADO Git repo, branch policies (such a requiring a PR to be linked to a work item) are set per-branch. There is no way to assign such policies to multiple branches. In order to set a branch's policies, navigate to a Repo's branches tab:

For a branch whose policy is to be set, click on the three dots to show the context menu shown below: 

From the context menu, select Branch policies. From the Branch Policies tab click on Check for linked work items:

Under Check for linked work items, insure the Required radio button is selected:

Git Branch Strategies

Requiring "check for linked work items" is set per-branch. Which branches this will be set for depends on the git branch strategy adopted.

Git Branch Strategy: Git Flow

For the Git Flow branching strategy the following branches would require a linked work item:

• Main/Master
• Develop
• Feature
• Release
• Hotfix

Git Branch Strategy: GitHub Flow

For the GitHub Flow branching strategy the following branches would require a linked work item:

• Main/Master
• Feature

Git Branch Strategy: GitLab Flow

For the GitLab Flow branching strategy the following branches would require a linked work item:

• Main/Master
• Feature
• Pre-Production
• Production

Git Branch Strategy: Trunk-based Development

For the Trunk-based Development branching strategy the following branches would require a linked work item:

• Main/Master
• Trunk
• Feature