Some team members can push directly to main despite minimum amount of reviewers

Some of our team members can push directly to our main branch, and some can't.

We have the following branch policies:

• Minimum of 1 reviewers
• Linked work item
• Comment resolution
• Required Build validation

There must be some kind of policy bypass, but I can't find anything online. Whatever I Google the only answer I get is "set a minimum number of reviewers". The accidental pushes to main are becoming a problem.

In addition to branch policies, you also need to configure branch security. Here's how to set AzDO permissions.

You will find in branch security that some users can bypass pull requests, which you will want to disable.

Tip: For shared branches such as main or master, my preference is to turn off inheritance and use explicit permissions. I then delete all default permissions and set permissions like this:

• Built-in Contributors Group (add all developers to this group if they aren't already): Contribute
• Create a group for people who are your Git repo admins and give them: Contribute (or add to Contributors group), Edit Policies, Manage Permissions, Remove other people's locks
• If you have automated builds or pipelines that need to push commits outside of a Pull Request (perhaps version or documentation commits, or automated merges), create a group for these users and give this group: Contribute, Bypass policies when pushing.

In the (hopefully) rare instances when someone needs to bypass a PR, or push outside of a PR, or even force push, the admin can temporarily give that person permission to do so, and then remove the permission immediately afterwards.