Microsoft Azure DevOps Reviews

We use the solution mostly for automation, deployment, generating build, and creating virtual machines.

The build and release management features are valuable. The deployment packages are also valuable.

Requirements traceability must be customizable. It is very difficult to integrate the product with third-party tools. It is all proprietary. It's not very customizable. It should be managed better. The product is not sufficient to generate documentation automatically.

I have been using the solution for three to four years.

The tool’s stability is good. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

We have around 60 users in our organization.

The turnaround time is high.

Positive

My team set up the solution. It took one and a half years to stabilize.

The tool helps us save reasonably.

The solution is expensive.

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

As an architect, I use Azure DevOps for our projects, primarily focusing on setting up CI/CD workflows. We track tasks and maintain timesheets on Azure DevOps. I collaborate with project managers to define deployment pipelines and ensure smooth deployment processes. While Azure DevOps serves as our project management tool, my main role involves architecting deployment strategies and working closely with the project management team to implement them effectively.

Switching to Azure DevOps initially posed challenges, but as our team became familiar with it, we found it greatly improved our daily operations and productivity. Its streamlined processes made our development workflow more efficient.

What I like most about Azure DevOps is how easy it is to manage projects and control deployments. Once configured, team members can manage deployments if they have permissions. Additionally, the reports feature helps generate itemized invoices for the services provided to clients, which is valuable for billing purposes.

One potential enhancement in Azure DevOps could be integrating more customizable reporting features, particularly for Power BI integration, to provide better insights into project data.

I have been working with Azure DevOps for five years.

Azure DevOps is quite stable.

Azure DevOps is scalable and can be used in distributed environments and for different tenants.

Before Azure DevOps, we used various tools like Jira. We decided to switch to Azure DevOps to have all services unified in one place, simplifying management. The main advantage is having everything centralized.

The initial setup process for Azure DevOps was somewhat complex, requiring documentation and technical support. Migration from previous tools and configuring project guidelines were involved. The deployment strategy involved creating directories, and repositories, setting up environments, and assigning access rights, following a predefined plan. Initially, deployment took about three to four hours, but now, for regular deployments, it typically takes 30 minutes to an hour, depending on project stability. 

For the initial deployment of Azure DevOps, gathering information from various resources is essential, but typically, only one person is needed to handle deployment through the web interface. Maintenance involves regular tasks like backups and occasional updates, requiring minimal effort.

The pricing for Azure DevOps may be higher compared to other tools, but overall, I find it reasonable.

In my experience, integrating reporting and analytics into Azure DevOps enhances project visibility and decision-making processes. We can easily generate reports online to track project status and task progress. Additionally, I have integrated Azure DevOps with other tools like SQL Server, enabling us to gather data for generating Power BI reports.

The most beneficial integrations with Azure DevOps are integration with other project management tools for seamless collaboration and APIs for importing data into applications. Additionally, integrating with personal models allows for enhanced analytics and reporting on resource performance and other project metrics.

The source control management features of Azure DevOps, particularly Azure Repos, are highly effective. We can easily track and manage code changes, commit updates, and maintain a complete history of changes for our applications.

I would recommend Azure DevOps to others. Before choosing Azure DevOps, I would advise considering the need for better project management, consolidation of management tools, and streamlining deployment processes.

Overall, I would rate Azure DevOps as an eight out of ten.

We integrate the report pipelines with Azure pipelines, automating the creation of pipelines and initiating deployments automatically. Our process includes continuous integration, deployment, and branching strategies.

The tool's most efficient feature is the integration of its services in one place. It is an easy-to-use product that improves productivity. Microsoft Azure DevOps is also user-friendly. Its documentation is clear and can be found on Google. 

Microsoft Azure DevOps should create some training materials. 

I have been using the product for more than four years. 

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a stable solution. 

The product is scalable. 

I haven't contacted the technical support team yet. 

I rate Microsoft Azure DevOps a nine out of ten. 

We use it for automating our code builds, significantly enhancing collaboration, and accelerating our release cycles. By reducing release times, we're able to ship our product faster, thereby increasing productivity and efficiency.

We use continuous integration and continuous deployment through Azure DevOps. With CI, we gain the advantage of fully approved code merges, as demonstrated in your demo. This ensures clarity on which releases are destined for production. With continuous delivery, we seamlessly deploy to both our test and production servers.

Azure DevOps supports our agile project management and sprint planning processes. This enables us to release sets of features more efficiently and quickly within the Agile framework. Additionally, DevOps facilitates the approval of features, further streamlining our release process.

When using the Agile template, we have visibility into what tasks are available, in progress, upcoming, and completed. This comprehensive view allows higher management to easily track the current status of tasks, including which ones are being worked on and which are finished.

It significantly enhances the testing phase of our software development lifecycle. Previously, after development, we deployed our software to a common QA environment for testing. However, now with Azure Test Plans, we can create isolated environments for each solution using virtual machines. This isolation helps us identify and address issues specific to our product, without being hindered by environment-related issues. With continuous integration through CI/CD pipelines, once our build is completed and approved, it automatically deploys without manual intervention, streamlining the process further.

Since adopting Azure Pipelines, we have observed significant improvements in our release management process. Previously, the process involved various stages and multiple approval steps, leading to fragmentation. However, with Azure DevOps, the entire process is streamlined, allowing for seamless transitions from board check-in to release approval within the same solution.

Before using Azure DevOps, we couldn't release as swiftly as we can now. With Azure DevOps, our ability to release has significantly improved. This increased efficiency means we can release more versions of our product, leading to higher productivity and the shipment of more artifacts than before.

The features that have a significant impact on us include CI/CD, where we have full integration with the source code repository and Azure Pipelines. This enables us to efficiently review and approve source code for deployment and testing. Utilizing Azure Test Plans, we can deploy to virtual machines, facilitating streamlined processes in a dedicated environment.

At times, our development work encounters issues, particularly when executing numerous CI/CD processes. Occasionally, these processes may experience delays or errors, often stemming from unavailable features or functionality in the cloud environment. Improvement in this area is necessary for smoother and more reliable operations.

We have been using it for two years.

This solution is stable. However, as mentioned earlier, configuring multiple CI/CD pipelines, with numerous processes running concurrently, can occasionally lead to issues.

Being cloud-based, this product is highly scalable, offering the flexibility to scale horizontally or vertically as needed. With a relatively small team of ten to twenty users, the scalability of the product aligns well with our requirements. It is widely utilized by both developers and the QA team.

The initial setup varies depending on the complexity of the workload. Some cases are intricate and require significant time to develop the end product or work item. Conversely, there are simpler, smaller cases that can be completed quickly.

For deployment, assistance from Microsoft or a system integrator is essential. Customizing templates and processes requires their full support to tailor them to our specific requirements. Since it's a cloud-based solution, the need for managers is minimized as management becomes simpler. A team of two to three individuals is sufficient for configuring it effortlessly.

The licensing for this product is on a monthly basis. It is relatively inexpensive compared to other solutions that necessitate servers and physical hardware.

 Overall It offers a comprehensive array of features with accessibility and support for customizations and performance enhancements. Its extensive feature set covers various aspects, making it highly versatile. I strongly recommend Azure's demo for exploring CI/CD pipelines, boards, and customization options. It will undoubtedly streamline development activities, reducing effort and boosting productivity significantly. Overall, I would rate it eight 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.