Azure DevOps Services Reviews

One of the aspects I liked most about Azure DevOps Services is its comprehensive suite of integrated tools that cover the entire software development lifecycle. From version control and continuous integration to project management and deployment automation, having everything in one platform fosters collaboration, streamlines workflows, and simplifies the management of software projects.

While Azure DevOps Services offers a robust set of features, one potential downside is the complexity of configuring and customizing certain aspects of the platform. In some cases, navigating through the various settings and options can be overwhelming, especially for new users or teams with limited experience with DevOps practices.

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.

1. Easy to use console: Azure ADO console is clean and very easy to use. It offers mutiple services like Azure Boards, Azure Artifacts and Azure Pipeline as well. All there features are pretty solid and packed with the required feature set. Integrations are also available to make sure the end user can use multiple tools at the same time.
2. Azure Boards: also offer Kanban style task tracking which is proven to be one of the best task management tool.

There are no major cons for Azure ADO. It offers all the required feature-set and integrations which is required by any large organisation. API access is also available in case anyone want's to access the services via CLI. We have not observed any lack or disadvantage for Azure ADO so far.

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.

If your organization uses Azure Cloud and other Azure products, this is the right DevOps service for you. Seamless integration and well knit into the stack. Ability wise you can integrate other products too - but needs decent effort.

If your organization is not an Azure shop and you use may be one or 2 products, this is an overkill. You have better equivalent choices in market to pick.

Smart agile tools, unlimited Git repos and modern services to build and ship our software products

Need to improve the Task boards features (in particular reports based on effort/story points)