Microsoft Azure DevOps Reviews

We use Microsoft Azure DevOps for application lifecycle management, including source control-related things, pipelines, and also for work item management. In short, the whole ecosystem.

Within our organization, there are roughly one thousand core developers using this solution. We also have stakeholders, product vendors, Scrum masters, testers, and manual testers. 

Mainly the source code solutions and the pipelines. Work item management and the manual test I/O. Test automation, end-to-end testing, and the manual test experience. It's got something that you won't find in other products. The work item management is good enough for small to medium-sized teams, and for large projects with plenty of teams collaborating with each other.

We can achieve the boundaries of the system. Potentially, we could do it with other tools like Jira. Still, with Microsoft Azure DevOps, we can manage everything.

Currently, if you would like to use the full-set of customization features, for example, the process templates, the HL process, or the Scrum process, if you start from scratch right now, you'll have these options. But if you've been working for several years in an established ecosystem, then you're based on an old-fashioned way of working and you won't be able to use the recent customization features.

There are options to get around this, especially if you move to the cloud or if you copy things and migrate them, but that's a huge amount of work. It's best if you start from scratch in a new project — in a new environment. With an ecosystem that has been up and running for some time, you won't have the full-flexibility that you would have with a new ecosystem.

We have been using this solution for roughly 10 years. 

This solution is stable. I don't have anything negative to report. 

Microsoft Azure DevOps is very scalable. It uses techniques from Microsoft itself, so if you have the knowledge of how to deal with that, you can scale it up and out as you wish.

Technical support is good. We have had a few cases where we needed support and they contacted us immediately. There was a willingness to find a solution and determine if there was a bug or if it was an oversight. We have a good relationship with Mircosoft support.

The initial setup is easy.

Most of our developers have an MSDN license which is linked to the Visual Studio development environment. 

We also have a corporate license for other products like Windows Server — it's all included in one package. An additional license is not required for the on-premise solution. If you go to the cloud, it's a different story. Most of the things that we need and use are incorporated in the corporate solution — there are no additional costs.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. 

It could be a little bit more flexible in terms of work item management. Apart from that, I can't really think of many features that are missing. It supports all kinds of ecosystems; there are a lot of possibilities when it comes to interacting with other ecosystems. 

Try to follow the market standards. There's a whole huge community that supports it. The market is evolving very fast. Microsoft is acquiring other companies. They recently bought GitHub. It's hard to say which solution will survive — DevOps or GitHub. That may be an issue in the future. 

The ability to interact with various other Azure services like for a deployment or using CICD was very helpful because when we leverage it for Azure IT helps. There's no CICD pipeline available. They provided us with some of the plugins to deploy that onto the Azure IOT edge.

They do very frequent releases, there's a complete change in UI kind of stuff. Sometimes it feels like they change it too often. They fix issues and add new features quite regularly which is good. 

They leverage a lot of new features, new features get released frequently, and sometimes the change management on our side is a bit complicated because we'll see something and there's an entirely different way how it is presented. You need to get it all working again.

Previously we asked them for more analytics on top of what they already had so that we could look at it comprehensively and see how the projects are progressing. They implemented these changes for us. 

It's stable. It's good. If there are some features missing we connect with the Microsoft team and then they get it developed and we utilize it.

It is very scalable. We use it for quite a lot of projects including running the data and all that stuff. We do quite a lot of analysis and analytics on top of that.

We have hundreds of users using this solution.

We don't really use technical support for incidents but more for developing new features. 

I've been using Microsoft based solutions, like VST and then like before that DSS. It was a natural progression from VSTS into Azure DevOps.

The initial setup is straightforward. We've been using Microsoft products for a while. 

It's a good tool, quite rich, it has a lot of features, and quite a lot of analytical capabilities which are built on top of it so that you can see how your projects are going and all that stuff. It's a good tool.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

There are two versions of Azure DevOps: the cloud version and the on-premises version. We use the cloud version in very few situations, but most of our software is based on Azure DevOps on-premises.

We are a software house, and we develop software. We use it to store our source code; that is, it is the repository for our source code.

We have different teams working on different products, and each one uses a different methodology and a different process. Azure DevOps helps with that. For instance, one group may be using Scrum as a methodology to develop their software. The other group could also be using Scrum but with CDCI (continuous development, continuous integration), which helps a lot when you have to develop, test, and deploy the solution.

I think the most usable thing is that you can follow the whole progress of the development process. This makes it very useful for us.

As for improvement, the first one is pricing. For us, luckily because we are partners, it's free. Microsoft gold partners do not have to pay, but if you're not a partner, the product is very expensive.

The second would be that the tool should integrate with some of the competitors. It doesn't matter if it's a big market; it's difficult when you have to integrate with other competitor's tools, like JIRA, for instance.

If you look at the competitor's tools, they integrate easily with Microsoft, but on Microsoft's side, it's not as easy. They have been changing, but still, there are a number of gaps there.

I've got teams that want to use Microsoft Project, not only to control the whole process of the development but also to control the whole project and software. I think Project should be integrated with DevOps.

We have been using this solution for 10 years.

It is very stable. I think the system is down only a couple of hours per year, so it's very stable.

It's very scalable. We started using this solution 10 years ago, and it has evolved, We also have grown our software production, and so far, we have scope with all these situations.

We haven't had any problems with the product, but every time we had some questions, technical support staff answered pretty fast, in less than 24 hours.

The initial setup is pretty easy.

For the deployment, I think we had two people: one person from infrastructure and one who was a specialist in Azure DevOps. For maintenance, because we have about 80 people using this software, we only have one and a half people taking care of the software. That is, the infrastructure person does this part-time. He doesn't spend the whole day taking care of DevOps.

The ROI is very positive for us, but it's difficult to say how it would be if we had to pay for the solution. It's a very worthwhile product, but again, we don't have any comparisons because we don't pay anything for it.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is an expensive solution.

Get to know the product because it is complex and has many different possibilities.

It is worth having it, but you have to have an in-depth understanding and know what it is capable of doing. Otherwise, you're going to install it, and then it will be like having a very nice car in your garage that you don't know how to drive.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Microsoft Azure DevOps at eight.

We are an application development company, so DevOps helps us manage the work our developers and software engineers do on-site. It's convenient for customers because everybody works from home due to COVID.

DevOps is used within our organization and we also encourage some of our clients who are interested in a development platform to use Azure DevOps, but we have other clients that actually prefer Red Hat or other platforms. We like Azure DevOps, but our cloud environment is AWS. We've done three implementations on AWS without any problem.

Our technical sales staff and business development people need to know how far the developers are on any product that we're developing. DevOps makes it easier for you to see how far along they are with the work because they have a repository where they store everything. There is a portal where you can see what has been done, what has been tested, what is working, and what isn't. I have a huge dashboard with an overview of what the development team is doing from an executive point of view.

I know exactly what they're working on. If the team is falling behind on a project, there's a project management module where I can see exactly what was supposed to be delivered and what hasn't been. 

I can't think of any specific things at the moment, but I've run into things that I didn't like. I came across something that I wanted to be changed in DevOps, but I can't remember what it was. It was a particular feature I was looking for that I couldn't find.

I'm happy with DevOps' stability. I've had problems with the Red Hat environment, but I think it also boils down still to implementation skills. We're a big Microsoft implementer, so we find Azure DevOps to be highly stable.

DevOps is highly scalable. Before one of our clients decided to move to the cloud version of DevOps, they decided to try it in a small environment to see if they liked it. Previously, they had Team Foundation Server running on-premises, and we encouraged them to switch to DevOps. We set up a minimal environment and used it as a typical development environment. It wasn't for testing or anything. It was just a mini development environment that replicated their internal chassis.

Before we started using DevOps, we were using Microsoft Team Foundation Server, which allowed the whole team to share work and collaborate. DevOps does that and a little more.

Most of the time we just leave it on the cloud instead of deploying it on-prem, unless a client requests on-prem. In that case, we just replicate the cloud environment in the on-prem environment. There's no real difference, and we've had some clients who change and say they now prefer to have it on the cloud. 

After the subscription, which took about a day, we had our B environment up and running, and everything was transferred from on-prem to the cloud. In the older days, it would take you about a month. But now, to move, it actually took us, I think, almost a week, because the biggest challenge was moving the data more than the environment. Moving the environment, it took about, I think, a day or two. But the data was a bit of a problem.

The cost of Azure DevOps is manageable. You have the option to purchase a license that is per user. You can choose based on the size of your team. For example, you can opt for a volume enterprise license or go for user-based licensing if you don't have a huge number of users. 

You can start with a smaller package and then scale up as needed. Let's say, for instance, you are a smaller company with about only 10 users of the environment. Then, two months later, you win the Powerball, and you get a billion dollars and bring in a thousand developers.

You have the flexibility to move from a small-team subscription to a big subscription easily. So you don't necessarily have to take the volume. The licensing model covers all three tiers, whereby you can have a volume license, individual users, or groups. 

We are using groups, and we've found it affordable because you cancel their license if someone leaves. When we get a new person, we repurchase the license. We pay a monthly subscription, but the annual licenses are cheaper because of the commitment. 

I rate Azure DevOps seven out of 10. I would give it a higher rating, but there are a couple of things that tick me off.

We use Microsoft Azure DevOps for applications that analyze data and the data scientist creates the test data for the manual and automatic application tests. Here in Europe, we need anonymous synchronization of all data for testing.

We create special applications for creating data for direct tests.

Microsoft Azure DevOps has been very good for creating pipelines, and all the solutions for creating task management for developers and for the business. 

All of the tests of the applications are done on the mobile or web interface and it could be improved.

The connection to Power BI could improve. Power BI is a very good platform for reporting and presenting processes, but a good engine does not exist to present the process development in time in Power BI. It's a typical business reporting tool.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for approximately one year.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is highly stable.

There are two options to build. The first option is to build in the cloud, which is very stable but not quickly. The second is to build the systems in the local networks. 

We have 5 to 10 people using this solution in my organization. We have three DevOps and the others are the QA cluster.

We do not use support from Microsoft, we have not had any problems.

The initial setup of this solution was complex. Every part of the implementation was difficult.

For us to implement our production it took approximately 10 to 20 sprints. One sprint is two weeks.

We require a three-person team for the maintenance and support of the solution.

The price of the solution is expensive.

All people who work on projects must have good staff in development in .net, and need to have certificates. The minimal certificate is the AZ-204 Azure developer, it is obligatory.

I rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a nine out of ten.

A common use case of Microsoft Azure DevOps is the use of work items and then connecting them to Git repositories and their updates. It is primarily used for item and code management.

The work items option is incredibly flexible.

There are multiple add-ons available.

It is easy to use.

The entry point is adequate.

When you compare with Jira, there is a lack of progress features.

I would like to be able to customize the product using add-ons or a similar mechanism.

Scalability is an area where they could advance and make changes.

Unfortunately, managing users in Azure is a very complicated issue. We also have a problem with one of their other tools, which is Teams. The Team messaging has caused us some trouble because they have what is called organization, in addition to the users, but it doesn't work very well.

Technical support needs improvement.

I would like to see scalability, dashboards, KPIs, measurements, and some visual management assistance improved in the next release.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure DevOps for one year.

We are using the latest version.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a stable product.

This solution is used by 20 people in our organization.

It appears to be simple, but based on the work items and project management aspects, I believe there are few options for scaling it up in terms of dashboards and KPIs.

I contacted technical support about managing users in Azure. Unfortunately, they were able to resolve this issue for us.

We tried several times and we did not get the answer we expected to get.

I use Jira as well as TFS.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is simple to install.

Other than the initial setup, it does not require any maintenance.

It was implemented internally.

The majority of the components are reasonably priced. Testing is one of the more expensive components. When you compare it, it is approximately $3 per month for the other components and $45 or $50 for the Testing component. It costs ten times as much as the other components.

I would recommend this solution to others who may be interested in using it.

I would rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a seven out of ten.

The plugins are the biggest thing. I like how Visual Studio is designed as a shell application, and then the plugins make it do what you want it to do.

Microsoft could improve Visual Studio by making it easier to find the plugins you need to get your job done. Maybe they could implement an AI search instead of a simple tech search. Sometimes, people come up with a catchy name for something, and you don't know how it's spelled. For example, a developer might come up with a packet wizard and spell weird, like P-A-K-I-T.

I've been working with Microsoft Visual Studio since it first came out in 1997, so about 24 years.

Visual Studio is very stable.

I don't think scale applies to Visual Studio because it's a developer tool. And I haven't had a lot of experience with massive projects where multiple teams are working on the same source code. I've only worked on a team of a few people.

I think support is probably pretty decent, but I've never had to use it. I just look at Visual Studio's source code to troubleshoot it. 

The setup is pretty straightforward. Visual Studio runs pretty fast.

I'd say Visual Studio is a nine out of 10. If you're thinking about adopting Visual Studio, research the kind of functionality you need. The nice thing about Visual Studio Code is that it's a modular design. So if you're working on a strange language that has a different syntax, you can just get a plugin that'll format your code for you based on the language it's in.

We use the solution for performance testing in general.

One of the main features is the user interface is very good.

The user management in the solution could improve.

I have been using it for four years.

The support for this solution has been fine.

The price is reasonable for the solution.

I rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a nine out of ten.