Microsoft Azure DevOps Reviews

As a software development team, we use Microsoft Azure DevOps extensively across various functions. We rely on its capabilities for source control, enabling us to efficiently manage our codebase and facilitate collaboration. Additionally, we leverage Azure DevOps for test management, including the creation and execution of test cases and test plans. Furthermore, we utilize its features for project planning, tracking work items, and generating weekly documents to ensure smooth progress tracking.

Azure DevOps has been instrumental in facilitating agile project management and collaboration within our team. We extensively utilize all the features offered by Azure DevOps, enabling us to seamlessly handle tasks such as test management, project management, software defect resolution, and source code management throughout the software development cycle.

We are leveraging the capabilities of Azure Repos for our source code management needs, finding them highly advantageous for our workflow.

Azure Pipelines have significantly improved our deployment process by enhancing automation. We utilize Azure Pipelines to standardize our build process, ensuring consistency in our artifacts and maintaining high-quality outputs. Additionally, it has enabled us to enhance our testing procedures, leading to more efficient issue detection and resolution.

Azure Test Plans have significantly influenced the quality of our releases. Acting as our test engine, they have played a crucial role in ensuring the quality of our software. Post-release, all identified defects are thoroughly addressed, and developers are requested to provide corresponding test cases to prevent recurrence of issues.

Azure Port is considered the most valuable feature.

When comparing with Jira, I find that the task management capabilities in Azure DevOps are not yet fully comprehensive and should be enhanced.

We have been using it for three years.

It provides good stability. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I would rate its scalability capabilities seven out of ten. Currently, approximately ten individuals utilize the platform. However, we plan to expand its usage in the future.

The initial setup was fairly complex and time-consuming. I would rate it four out of ten. During the initial setup, we encountered the most difficulty with Microsoft's documentation. It proved to be quite lengthy and lacked clear guidance, which made the setup process challenging. Consequently, we had to explore various additional resources to ensure a smoother setup of Azure DevOps.

For our initial deployment, we allocated one DevOps engineer who dedicated approximately one and a half months to complete the setup.

The cost is quite affordable.

The initialization process may pose some challenges, but I find that the investigation aspect is handled quite effectively. Overall, I believe it's well-suited for both general and specialized DevOps use cases. I would rate it seven out of ten.

We are using it for the source-code repository, automated bill process, very limited automated testing, and tracking trouble tickets or feature requests. We are using its latest version.

The automated bill feature is most valuable. As with most software developers, I can build code on my machine, but if one of my coworkers can't build the same code on theirs, there are always issues in trying to track it down. The automated bill process makes it a lot easier to track down where the issues are and find out what bugs aren't being included for whatever reason.

They should expand it from just a PC, software, or server development platform to other kinds of software or engineering systems so that it is not necessarily built around a normal PC with a server.

I would like to see the ability to write my own scripts in my own compiled program or online. Right now, there are things that you can do in the user interface, but you can't do them programmatically and vice versa. I want to see them both. If I can do it in a script, I should be able to do it from the user interface, and if I can do it in the user interface, I should be able to do it in a script.

I have been using this solution for a total of four years.

From what we've used it for so far, I have not seen any problems.

We're using perhaps 10% of what it is capable of doing. It is far more capable than what we are using right now. With further experimentation and training, I'll probably go from 10% utilization of its capabilities to about 50% or 60% in the next couple of months. We'll never use 100% of what it is capable of doing, but it should handle 95% of everything we need to do. We can always write our own plugins to handle the side things that we need.

Scalability is not really applicable with the code that we write, but the build times and things like that typically take under 15 seconds before we get our responses back. So, it works extremely well.

In terms of the number of users, there are six of us who are software developers. Some of the managers might also partially use the reporting capabilities.

I haven't called them up.

I've used JIRA and a number of different systems going back almost 20 years. We were doing our development using Microsoft tools, and it just made sense to use what they integrate with. Azure DevOps is the perfect environment because we're using Microsoft technology for other stuff. It is always going to have slight favoritism towards the other Microsoft tools.

The basic setup works very quickly, but there are so many things and options.

We did it ourselves, which is one of the problems. We don't know what we're doing.

I don't know what we pay, but I do know what I've seen online. If we switched to JIRA, we will basically have to double our costs because we still have to pay for the DevOps licensing. We're probably spending $100 a month on it. It has only standard licensing fees.

It is a really complicated product. All DevOps stuff is complicated. The advice that I would give to anybody doing DevOps is to have a goal in mind of what you want to do. Then the product will do what you wanted it to do. 

I would rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a four out of ten because I don't know it enough to rate it.

I work in a consulting firm responsible for adding, managing, and deploying government projects. We are using Microsoft Azure DevOps in one of the projects for backlog management, test planning, test execution, sprint planning, bug fixes, and enhancement requests. We use the solution for anything related to development testing.

The solution's most valuable features are backlog management, build release pipeline, and testing. They're easy, intuitive, and increase productivity. Usually, if you don't use such a solution, you end up using Excel. Then, you won't have shared documents, and there'll be no single source of growth. Everybody will keep a different document somewhere, and you will spend a lot of effort reconciling the latest status.

Using Microsoft Azure DevOps makes it really easy for us. Anytime you can see how many bugs are open, you can directly get it out of the tool. The solution's reporting is really easy. You can create ad hoc reports based on management requirements. If you are sitting in a meeting and somebody asks you the number of chain requests, bugs, or enhancements, you can create quick queries and show them the status. I think this directly affects productivity.

Microsoft Azure DevOps doesn't have an ITSM tool compared to its competitors. We also use Jira for another project, and Jira supports ITSM or ticketing. Since Microsoft Azure DevOps doesn't have this feature, we have to depend on another solution for service request management for support tickets.

The solution should include ITSM tools and security. DevSecOps are third-party security plug-ins that you can integrate with DevOps. Azure DevOps itself doesn't have anything out of the box. Enabling security so that the solution automatically starts checking things would be a really handy feature.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for three years.

We haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability.

I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten for stability.

Since it's a SaaS solution, we haven't faced any scalability or performance issues, and we haven't struggled when we had a lot of users. We have gone through a curve. We started with around ten users. At the peak of the project, we had almost 50 users. Since we are in maintenance, we have come down to 10 to 15 users.

We use 100% of Microsoft Azure DevOps for our project. Everything is within Azure DevOps. If anybody says that we need to work on a feature, the first thing we do is create a DevOps item. So, we don't do anything outside DevOps.

The tool provides the features, but we haven't been able to onboard end users. We are a consultancy firm that works with system integrators and also engages with the end client. We have been able to onboard the system integrators, and we are also using it.

However, the end users still prefer sending emails and documents. If you send them a link to run a test script, they won't do it. So, the end users still prefer the old ways, such as emails and documents.

I rate the solution's scalability a nine or ten out of ten.

So far, we haven't faced any issues in terms of technical support. There is good documentation available if you are looking for support for configuration. So, you usually end up resolving your issues yourself. Since this tool is widely used, you can find help online. People are writing content about this solution, and Microsoft itself has good documentation.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a nine out of ten. The solution's initial setup is pretty easy, and the rollout is pretty quick. You can enable it and then keep on modifying and updating it.

It took us less than a week to deploy Azure DevOps. Since we were using a cloud environment, there was no infrastructure requirement. We went on Azure DevOps, created an organization, and then created a project. Inside the project, we selected the type of project.

There are different templates that you can follow, including the CMM-level approach or the basic approach. We selected one of the templates and copied the template. We made some modifications to the template for the project because that template is used for governing steps.

Then, we created depositories, which is pretty quick. In a week's time, we were up and running with backlog management. It took a couple of weeks to complete the automated build and deployment pipelines.

We needed one person to set up the project and one knowledgeable about the build and deployment pipelines. If you have a person who knows how to do the pipelines, you can also configure the project. So, one person is good enough to set up the entire project.

We have seen a return on investment with Microsoft Azure DevOps in terms of productivity because it really helps with the amount of time you need to consolidate reporting and planning. The status is always up to date, and the deployment is very streamlined. You can do the entire thing in Excel, but the overhead would be too much, and you would lose out on things. So, team synchronization and productivity are the return on investment with the solution.

I rate the solution’s return on investment a nine out of ten.

The solution's pricing is pretty cheap. The best part of the Azure DevOps and SaaS model is that there's no upfront cost. The tool has a per-user license. It's free for five users, and there is a price above five users. The solution's deployment and licensing costs are very cheap compared to those of its competitors.

The solution's pricing is not fixed. The solution's testing license is $50 per user. It's $15 for normal users who use backlog management. We have two people from the test team and seven from the other team. This is in maintenance.

Since we had a big testing team, we had 15 people in testing and 30 people in backlog management during peak time. You can say it has a 70:30 ratio. Most of the cost is in testing, and the backlog management is really cheap.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.

Before choosing Microsoft Azure DevOps, we evaluated other options like Jira and HP ALM. Jira is good at ITSM and backlog management, but it is dependent on third-party tools for pipeline deployment.

It's too complex to do product management with HP ALM. It's a good ITSM tool, but the process it follows for product management is very stringent, which is not very flexible for sprint planning. There is too much overhead in HP ALM to do quick sprints.

We are working with the SaaS (Software as a Service) version of the solution, which is on the cloud. Since Microsoft provides the latest upgrades and patches, it should be the latest version.

We start by creating backlog items. Whenever we get a requirement, we log it into Azure DevOps and plan the backlog. The backlog includes what features we need to develop and what tasks we need to assign to each developer. Each developer is part of the DevOps. Once you have created that backlog, we assign it to different developers based on a sprint.

Suppose we are going to run a four-week development cycle. So, we plan the development cycle, pick a few items from the backlog, assign them to that sprint, assign them to the developer, and then manage the execution of that development cycle. Once that's completed, we will transfer it to the test team so they can test it in Azure DevOps.

They have test scripts that are documented in Azure DevOps. They run tests, record videos, and capture screenshots in Azure DevOps. After the test verification, we deploy the solution. In addition to backlog management and product management, we use Azure DevOps for build and release deployment. We don't manually go and build the software.

Our code repository is also part of DevOps. As soon as we check in the new code, Azure DevOps automatically builds the solution and then deploys it in the development environment. Once it's confirmed, the same is deployed to quality and production. We use the solution to do everything end to end, other than ITSM.

Specifically, Azure DevOps is integrated with deployment for us. When we manually deploy a solution, it's prone to errors. We use Azure for website deployment and Azure DevOps for Apple app or Google app deployment.

As soon as the approval is done in Azure DevOps, apps are automatically published. It will publish an app on the Google Play Store, Apple Play Store, and Azure, which we use for web hosting. So, it is integrated with web hosting, Apple Store, and Google Play Store.

The solution does not really need any maintenance. Once you enable the testing solution, you can start creating your test plans and test scripts directly. Every time you do a deployment, you just need to run those test scripts, which is pretty easy. It's more about creating your test script than configuring the tool. Even if I do it in Excel, I need to spend time on that.

The solution's analytics and reporting are pretty easy. We use them very often on an ad hoc basis whenever we discuss and plan what to deploy and what the next steps are. It's pretty easy, and we haven't faced an issue where we weren't able to take out any reports just by doing it on an ad hoc basis. It's pretty easy, and you don't need to write code or anything.

The tool is pretty flexible and easy to use. I suggest starting with the cloud version because you can create your project easily. Since it's free for five users, organizations with budget constraints can start playing with limited users. I would say start with the cloud-based version and start playing with it. Once you get comfortable with it, you can expand it for other projects. The tool serves a wide variety of use cases.

The biggest key trend these days is fast deployments or quick releases. Given how competitive the market has become, you need to keep on adding features to your product. Azure DevOps supports the sprint methodology, which supports fast deployment.

On top of that, it supports automated build release deployment. That was a headache when I started working. Sometimes, you forget a file when deploying in production, and your system will go down. The solution's features support the latest fast or quick deployment trend.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We are a team of 12 consultants specializing in this solution. We have customers with approximately 200 users each, and we have been able to reduce our customers' deployment time by using Azure DevOps or TFS.

Additionally, our customers have been able to measure and improve their development process, by generating some KPI's as 'average defect fixing time', 'effort deviation', and 'velocity' among others, due to the continuous use of Azure DevOps.

The integration of the whole cycle is the main strength of the tool. If I want to control the cycle with other tools on the market, I would have to use several tools. However, this is not the case with Azure DevOps or TFS.

The ability to extend work items was more flexible than it is now. Talking version control, one of our customers had some issues because they found it very difficult to manage more than 1000 repositories for one team project.

Additionally, I would like to see more powerful dashboards that could be used instead of Power BI. Azure DevOps or TFS does not support graphics from hierarchy queries. It would be powerful to have because some customers don't have Power BI licenses.

We have been working with Azure DevOps or TFS for the past 11 years.

It is totally stable.

The documentation is good and thus, we have not had to contact technical support very often. However, when we have escalated an issue to technical support, they have been good.

The initial setup can be straightforward if the consultant is knowledgeable.

The pricing is very competitive because of the whole development cycle by Azure DevOps. You don't have to buy and integrate several different tools.

Azure DevOps or TFS is a very good tool for development teams. It's easy to use. However, you would need the help of a consultant who has a lot of experience with the tool. This is because the tool let's you do things in many ways, but not all of them will be the right way to do it. It would be better to invest in the services of an experienced consultant.

Overall, I would rate TFS or Azure DevOps at nine out of ten.

The first time I used the solution was to create a build for an Oracle application called SOA. We generated all the features in Azure DevOps to create the build and then we created a workflow. We are partners of Microsoft and I'm head of technology.

We have the histories, and are able to estimate the efforts of each story. It means that I can measure it from each developer and I have the match from each developer. We can also check it from the lead time to see whether there are any problems in storage that may not be mature. It gives us control. 

We use Gitch as a version control and the integration is very good. We are also using the features for the product backlog that's released every day so we have the user histories. We can track it from the histories to the code. You can see all the steps in the life cycle we use with our clients. We also like to use the estimate integration feature where you have two or three developers that estimate different efforts for each history. I think Azure is easy to integrate with any other type of solution to improve your delivery.

I think the templates could be improved. It's not easy making the jump from one project to another so we're now integrating using a different partner. I believe the price could be improved when scaling. It's a simple calculation, the number of users times $11, which is approximately the cost. But if you have a large number of users you should be able to reduce the per user cost the more you scale. I think it's something Microsoft could do for us. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

This is a very mature and stable solution. 

We have about 100 users; developers, engineers and admin. The platform doesn't require any maintenance but we have one DevOps engineer to support the DevOps for the applications that we integrate with the platform. There are two types of scalability, the first is scaling my team, moving from 100 to 200 users, which is easy to do. The second is structure but  I haven't yet tested scalability in terms of increased structure.

Actually, we don't have a lot of experience opening tickets with technical support. All tickets that we did open were dealt with quickly. 

I used IBM where I worked previously but didn't have a lot of experience with it. 

We had some initial difficulties, because the solution is not commonly used here. Jira and Microsoft are the most common solutions but it's not usual to use everything inside the platform. It was a cultural change that we implemented here in our team and to convince them was more difficult than to use the platform itself. We used an integrator for deployment but we don't do that in every case. In some of our deployments, hosting the most popular software development languages, like Java or .NET makes it easy to create the deployment mode. But when you have different platforms on development, it's more difficult to configure. We're on an SaaS platform, so deployment was very easy.

We have 100 users and the cost is $11 per user. There's an additional cost if you want to use the integrated test plan. You have the option to just change your license and you can use the automated test integrator.

We looked at Jira Confluence and it was our second option. On Jira, we have our environment in Azure, and it was easier to adopt Azure DevOps instead of Confluence. Because Confluence is specifically for Azure DevOps, we can integrate it with everything that we are already using.

It's very easy to start using this solution because the first five licenses are free. As a result, it's easy to track and compare with other solutions and it's easy to scale. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Azure DevOps is primarily used as a DevOps tool rather than an AI tool. It is used for source code management, setting up repositories and pipelines, and it can handle a range of workflows from the DevOps stack.

The tool helps by being an all-in-one solution where I can store secrets, code, and pipelines. This comprehensive nature has made it valuable and helpful by improving customer productivity and allowing me to perform multiple tasks without needing additional solutions.

Azure DevOps is highly valued for being an all-in-one solution. It offers capabilities like source code management, secret storage, pipeline management, and more, making it comparable to a multitool that does not require integration with other solutions. I appreciate it for its scalability and ability to handle different workflows effectively.

A notable improvement would be adding more notifications. It would benefit from more seminars or events where Microsoft encourages other users to transition to Azure DevOps.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure DevOps for around two years.

The stability of Azure DevOps is rated as stable and simple, with no complexity involved. I have not experienced any outages or downtimes in Azure DevOps.

Azure DevOps is highly scalable and receives a rating of ten out of ten. It can handle various volumes of workflows, which makes it effective for different use cases.

I have not communicated with technical support for Azure DevOps.

Neutral

Azure DevOps does not have a complex setup process. It requires Microsoft Azure for the services used, and the product itself is simple to set up.

The pricing of Azure DevOps is rated at five out of ten. It is mid-range pricing. It is considered to offer good value for money even if setting up an agent separately is required.

Our discussion mentioned Jenkins as a popular CI/CD product.

Azure DevOps is a very powerful tool with almost every feature necessary for DevOps, so it is recommended to other users.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We are mostly using Microsoft Azure DevOps for the development dashboard and for CI/CD pipelines. We also use it mainly for Git repository management.

We are primarily using Microsoft Azure DevOps for its Git repository management and CI/CD pipelines.

Service monitoring should be improved. This feature is available for Azure DevOps in the cloud but not on-premise. It can be enhanced to be used with on-premise solutions.

I have almost three years of experience working with Microsoft Azure DevOps.

This solution is stable. Its stability rating is eight out of ten.

I have not contacted Microsoft technical support; I rely on the documentation.

Positive

I did not use a different solution before using Microsoft Azure DevOps.

For me, the initial setup experience would be rated a seven out of ten.

The deployment takes only a few minutes. That said, it depends on the size of the artifact. If the artifact size is large, it will take a bit more time. We did not use any third-party services; we handled it in-house.

I have no idea about the pricing of Microsoft Azure DevOps.

I did not evaluate other options. We had to listen, as we were already using the solution.

I recommend Microsoft Azure DevOps. It is user-friendly.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use Microsoft Azure DevOps as a code repository, for task and work management, software tests, and documentation.

The most valuable feature of the solution is task management.

The solution could be made faster because it can be a little unnerving to browse through too many pages and press too many buttons.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for six years.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a stable solution.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a scalable solution. In my current company, around 30 users are using the solution. In my previous organization, more than 100 users were using Microsoft Azure DevOps.

The solution makes you faster. You can organize your work in an easy and shared way. You can configure different types of access to allow some people just to read and to be able to modify some things. Since the solution gives you all the benefits of Git, you have a commit history.

We have an MPN subscription for Microsoft Azure DevOps, and it's all included.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is deployed on the cloud in our organization. The product supports our agile project management practices very well. We can configure a process, and it would give you some different types of tasks, like the epics feature, user stories, and tasks. We need very little staff for the solution's deployment and maintenance.

For source control, we use Git repositories that are perfectly integrated into our IDE, Visual Studio 2022. Everything is available, and we can create or pull requests from Microsoft Azure DevOps. We can also manage, reject, and accept the requests. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Using Azure Boards for tracking work items and bugs is clear and visually appealing. It's easy to add tasks. In our current configuration, every time I go inside the tasks and go back using the browser, it doesn't redirect me to Azure Boards, even if I am coming from there.

Since the solution is available as Software as a Service (SaaS), you won't need to do any setup, installation management, etc. It's very straightforward, and there is no particular study required. To a certain degree, the solution is configurable and can suit different use cases. It is working very well in terms of Git repositories. Microsoft Azure DevOps is also very accessible.

You can define tasks using Microsoft Azure DevOps and then reference them when you write a commit message or push code. You can open a previous commit in the browser from Visual Studio, and you can use DevOps to compare some files or to check commits done by Visual Studio. So, the solution is perfectly integrated.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.