Azure DevOps Services Reviews

The functionality can be extended with add-ons; since there are many add-ons, you can do a wide range of things. Being able to do certain things even when engineers are not present also helps to keep the product running stably.

I would be happy if the manual to consult when I don't understand the operation is a little more complete.

Devops is not just devops... it's total devops. A whole suite of things from release management, build automation, time management, ticketing, scrum and task boarding to source repository. I don't think anything is left out. It's all very much connected, which means for instance that creating a new branche can become a new ticket that is automatically placed on a task board etc.

I don't think anything is missing, but at some points it's not very intuitive. I still have to search every time to get to specific features of my build and release configuration.
Security features are very good, but there too I find myself trying to understand how it works every time again.

Integration with other Microsoft products and the fact that you can do everything in it without having to add anything else, you can manage projects, have source-control, develop software, manage release, integrate automation into your build pipeline, manage manual tests, etc.

I wish Test Plans had a cheaper tier or maybe a free plan with basic features, quite pricey this way.

It integrates well with other Azure services. You can even have branches setup on the same project. Despite a few aesthetic changes, the UI reminds me very much of Jira and other management software. It's clean and intuitive.

I want to use it more to get a better sense of the shortcomings but coming from another platform, I find it to have less plugins and add ons than the others. Maybe it's to keep the clean boards and tasks but I'd like more 3rd party options.

Since I've been utilizing Azure DevOps Services, I must admit that I'm impressed with how it has benefited my team and I as we work on development projects. The feature set of this service that caters to numerous facets of software development, such as project planning, code management, testing, deployment, and monitoring, is what I value the most.When it comes to facilitating smooth communication and coordination between team members, including those who operate remotely, Azure DevOps Services' collaboration tools are very beneficial. We can organize activities and monitor progress effectively thanks to the agile boards' and backlogs' intuitiveness and usability.It's also great that Azure DevOps Services enables continuous integration and deployment, which makes it simpler for us to automate our software delivery pipeline and deliver new features and upgrades on schedule. Additionally, troubleshooting reports and prioritizing capabilities come in handy for quickly detecting and fixing issues as they arise.

Despite my appreciation for the variety of features and capabilities provided by Azure DevOps Services, I have occasionally seen documentation that is deficient or ambiguous, making it challenging to debug problems or comprehend how particular features operate. Despite these difficulties, I continue to think of Azure DevOps Services as a useful tool for organizing my projects and working with my team.

If your company is fully invested in the Microsoft product suite, Azure DevOps is the extension of that investment. It allows direct integration with the Cloud Services in Azure for IaC, CaC, and CI/CD code deployments. It also allows the customization for the workflows for Agile, SCRUM, Kanban, etc... to match up with core source control, testing, along with build and release strategies. Its a one stop shop for each of the core disciplines in IT Teams in the ALM process. If you need extensibility to other platforms outside of Azure, the connectors and integration are available to AWS, Google Cloud, On-premise, etc... It allows your teams to work collectively in 1 platform, but use their "own" tools to deliver (i.e. Java, Jenkins, Linux, etc....).

Because the platform has so many connectors and integrations, customization becomes challenging. You need advocates and training to customize the "teams" to standardize and integrate with working patterns. The features being added are more Microsoft oriented than development oriented.

There is a ton of features.
They just did a new design and rebranded it.
You can set automatic builds to test your code.
It allows for organized planning through the Boards section.
There is easy integration with Azure Cloud.
It allows use of either Git or TFVC.

With all of the features, it's easy to get lost.
Settings and security seems to be all over the place, so it's hard to track down the setting you need.
There's a learning curve if you haven't used VSTS or TFS before.

The best thing about Azure DevOps is that it is natively integrated and connected to all of your other Azure cloud resources and it makes it easy to manage and govern you infrastructure because they are all inside Azure. It has all kinds of templates for your various software platforms to enable you build and deploy your code from Azure hosted source control into Azure services for your customers.

Sometimes the build machines can be slow, you need to bring your own build machines and setting your own build machines can be complicated. The Git aspect of the Azure DevOps is also not as smooth as other competitions in the market like Github, but it is very extensible.

Fully support to scrum's artifacts and processes.
The far away the team is, you reap the benefits of an integrated management tool that offers panels, kanban, and notifications that can not be fixed to the wall.
The investments and ongoing costs are insignificant, given the immediate collaborative environment that it establishes.
No overhead of management tasks, people keep focused in the product development and it reduce work time.

Need improvements in pre-configured reports and dashboards.
Continuous integration and continuous deployment are complex to setup up and keep running.
The control of product backlog items that spend more than one sprint (like Epics) is weak and make you confused as if the work was delayed.

I find the sprint planning features, dashboard and sprint boards intuitive and convenient. I like being able to organize my tickets and easily see the work of other members of my team.

I am not a huge fan of the test planning aspect of the program. I find creating test cases to be clunky, even when using the "grid" functionality that allows you to import test cases from a spreadsheet. One example is that when creating a test case using the "grid" feature, if you had multiple line breaks within a single cell in a spreadsheet, it will copy each line break into a separate cell in the grid instead of copying them into a single cell with line breaks as they appeared in the spreadsheet.

Most of all, I like how easy it is to track my work and the work of everyone on the team. Coming from a waterfall development cycle to an agile one, it's a big adjustment, and VSTS DevOps helps make that process easier.

Okay, this might be indicitve of my product manager more than the software itself, but I'd like it if Acceptance Criteria and Steps to Recreate were required fields in any Bug/PBI (where applicable). It would lead to much better work.