Microsoft Azure DevOps Reviews

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I trust my team with peer reviews of our designs, code, test and infrastructure.

I'm familiar with Azure DevOps in the sense that my group directive has based the administration, architecture, and development on Azure. So whichever hat that I need to wear at the time that's the one I can wear.

I would say that Pipelines is Azure's most valuable feature. Also generally, Azure enables us to create a staging environment through to a production environment in an easier way and then get the code and run that. It also has decent pull requests and things like that.

Azure DevOps is a very cross-platform product. One of the issues that I have currently with the company is that they are using two different parts of technology. They were using JIRA for their sprint work and they were also using Confluence, as well as other Enterprise software. I advised them that all their sprint planning, backlog work, and everything else, can be done out of Azure DevOps from one central place. I know the Microsoft team will always look at improvements because I know that they are constantly looking at improvements to products while listening to their customers and looking at a global scale. I'm keeping my ear to the ground, as I always do.

The product keeps evolving and at the moment there are a lot of good parts There are petabytes of data. Anytime somebody does a pull request or anything else, Microsoft is notified about it. So if somebody, somewhere is always looking at that and watching, that can be a revolutionary product. It's a product that can continuously grow and evolve in time. Even if it is not yet what you call a finished article, it's a growing and evolving product.

Everybody has a slightly different take on what solutions or what part of the solution they would like to be improved. You can always improve a platform. Microsoft is always listening to customers and they will bring out a new version. The platform is quite user-friendly at the moment because you can use any program or language with it. You can't say you need another program, because as far as I'm concerned the main ones can be integrated with Azure. The newer ones like Go, as well as older ones like Python, Java, and PSP,  can all be integrated with that platform.

I suppose when we hear about that release, I have no doubt that because Microsoft captures a lot of metrics and information that they monitor, like capturing data about what or how people use their product, they can see where the usage is and where they might want to remove a feature. That analysis and also comes from Microsoft's monitoring capabilities.

I thought it was very stable. They didn't have any shaky moments. Predominantly with Azure DevOps you need one thing only: a solid internet connection. If you've got a solid Internet connection, you just push everything up to the platform or run an integral request. I haven't had any issues with that. Some people might have, but it all comes down to their internet connection.

This solution is extremely scalable.

It helps a lot in Microservices or service technologies. Using the infrastructures of code enables a productivity increase of a thousand percent. I was speaking with a company that was pulling 12 requests at one time but using competitive technology like DevOps they were able to pull over 2000 requests at the same time. It's extremely scalable and you can use it to scale down when it needs it. It's a completely autonomous product, that allows you to scale whatever you need.

I have five or six back end developers that use it every day. They learn every day, so whatever code or scripts they write are in Azure DevOps. They're not using any another tool to do it, they are pulling it with the platform because you can't tell other people about a platform if you aren't using it yourself. The first thing they do is log on to DevOps.

There will be an increase in our usage of the product. We are looking to expand at some point. The more people that come on board, the more use there is for the product.

We haven't had a requirement to contact their technical support. I have contacted their technical support before under some other projects and got a really good response from the person on the other end of the phone. They are always looking to help you solve more solutions as quickly as they possibly can.

I don't think I have had a bad experience; I've always had continuity. They were able to get me the problem resolved, whether it was a P1 or P4 issue. I've never had a problem with the technical support.

I have experience with Amazon Web Services. As the Azure product has matured a lot in the last two to three years, it deserves its market share at the moment. We were using other products, like Visual Studio, a web service which is an old name for Visual DevOps. We were also using things like Team Foundation Server (TFS). We were just using some of the older tech.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We did the implementation ourselves.

I'm working on the high-level design and the low-level design so I know where we're going to start, and whether we've got a blank slate. I've worked with many firms in the past and companies have their own design in place. Usually, some of these companies material is outdated and Microsoft will probably move the bar several times. We are Microsoft accredited so we stay in touch with the technology more recently than most. We've constantly been informed of the latest technology and the latest products that are evolving on the platform. That includes those that are in preview, which I hope will become available, as well as those that are going to be deprecated. We're basically in full harmony with Microsoft and their products.

We most definitely achieved an ROI.

Check out the pricing information from Azure Cost and analysis information.

No Visual Studio Team Services and Visual code were the preferred options.

The first thing that I would suggest is to read the documentation for the platform. The online documentation changes pretty much every other week; there is always something new coming out. Practice, practice, and practice. Test, practice, and repeat. You need to know your way around the platform and the only way to do that is by hands-on practice. You can't break the environment, but you can speed things up on the thirteenth hour. It depends on how you configure things since every configuration is different. It's an excellent product that is taking into account current technology, yet also flexible enough to use with future technology.

At the moment I would rate Azure DevOps as a nine out of ten. The reason I wouldn't give anything a ten is because it's constantly evolving. There is room for improvement, as this is not the finished article at all. The reason I would give it a nine is the information to get the best usage out of the product is readily available. I've been using Microsoft tech for over 25 years now and back in the day it was difficult to get information out of Microsoft even when you were an MCPN. You would have a special link to go through a Microsoft back door to gain information. That's completely different to the advice that you would get related to Microsoft.com. Now Microsoft is completely different with everything readily available. You can download it in pdot format and the document could be 2000-3000 pages. They leave no stone unturned.

The only problem I would say at the moment is a friend of mine said that the Microsoft test book is taking a long time to come out because he wants to take the exam. Some people need to read the information and retain the information that way. Sometimes you go on these courses that are not run by Microsoft directly. They can be very flaky and don't have all the information or experience of using the product in normal working life.

If there is anything I would ask for, it's to get the documentation out on hardback so that we can add it to our libraries. That would be very good.

The two most valuable features are Azure Pipelines for DevOps automation, and Azure Test Plan for test management.

It is quite easy to create a pipeline, from continuous integration to automated testing, to continuous delivery, performance testing, and continuous deployment. It's graphical representation and tools are easy to use.

The automated testing in DevTest is the big advantage of Azure DevOps.

Non-functional testing such as security testing, penetration testing, and performance testing could be improved. 

This Cloud solution is very stable.

We have approximately one hundred users, the majority of which are developers. There are some project managers and team leads, as well as different levels of management who present to stakeholders.

Currently, two or three of our development teams use Azure DevOps. In the future, we plan to include five more teams. This will grow the number of active users from one hundred to two or three hundred.

I have not used Microsoft support directly. We have an internal support team that is dedicated to Office 365, Azure DevOps, and other Microsoft solutions.

Prior to this, we used Team Foundation Server versions 2017 and 2018 on-premise, and it was a stable solution.

We also used the Atlassian stack, including Jira, Bamboo, and Confluence, all on-premise. The problem is that the on-premise version has an expiry. We moved to a cloud solution because it is easy to support, easy to upgrade, and easy to stage our products. It is distributed between our offices, as we have development teams split into different locations around the country. The cloud-based solution is the best way to integrate our development effort.

I have also worked with HP ALM/Quality Center in the past.

The initial setup for this solution is quite easy.

Our internal DevOps team handled the implementation.

I have worked with other products, and this is the best solution in the market in 2019.

Deployment of solutions on Azure DevOps is a perfect way to provide Disaster Recovery and High Availability. This is a straightforward solution, and I would suggest not wasting any time looking at others.

Right now, this is the best solution.

I would rate this solution ten out of ten.

I have been working with it for different projects and purposes. I'm basically the main architect for such solutions.

It is stable. I like Azure a lot. All our guys are Microsoft certified. 

It is fairly new, so there are a lot of changes, and because it keeps on changing, you need to adapt to those changes.

Its setup is quite complex.

It is stable.

We never used Microsoft's technical support. We always get it right.

Its initial setup is quite complex. There are a lot of caveats. Even if I can call a setup out of the box, it is not really out of the box.

We managed everything on our own. It involved fitting other products with the existing product. If you don't encounter problems, you're not going to learn.

We are 100% satisfied with it. I would rate it a nine out of 10.

With the query feature, we have to group items, so it becomes difficult for everyone to understand it. It's easier in JIRA, which has filters and other query options. So, I think this query option should be there in the DevOps also. Also, I don't like the DevOps' boards at all. It's more complicated than JIRA, I think. So, DevOps can improve in terms of its boards, work items, and filters. 

Then there is also an issue with user access. We have about 10 to 15 users that we can add to DevOps. But only the first five users have basic level access, and the rest have stakeholder access. That means they can change the task status but not add or do anything. I think Microsoft should remove this restriction from DevOps. With the access restrictions, it's tough for us to add any status for our users or filter anything on the boards. So, Microsoft should add this functionality for the other roles as well.

DevOps is a stable solution.

It's average. It's not better than JIRA. It's average because many things need to be improved by Microsoft in all their products.

Setting up DevOps is easy. 

We pay for DevOps when we use it for our clients. But for personal and internal projects, we can use the free version. But there are restrictions on the trial plan. It should also be available for free use. However, the trial version of DevOps is free for only five basic users. So, I think it should be free for others also. And other extensions like test plan creation should also be available for the basic users, at least. We have to purchase the license for this.

We use both JIRA and DevOps. The main difference between DevOps and JIRA is the test cases. You can have test cases in DevOps but not in JIRA. And, DevOps has advantages in terms of executing those test cases. You can develop releases from DevOps but not from JIRA. At the same time, JIRA's jQuery is the best. I don't like the grouping and filtering in DevOps. 

I rate Microsoft Azure DevOps seven out of 10. I would recommend it to others. It's a nice and helpful tool.

We use it to manage the project. We create the product backlog, and we put our tasks into the DevOps schedule.

Azure DevOps allow you to create a bridge for maintenance and support, directly to the client. We can forecast tasks and the number of hours a task will take and can compare it with how long a task actually takes. The Timetracker function allows us to put all this together. Before Azure DevOps, we had difficulty predicting how long tasks would take, considering all the parts that must work together.

We have a component server, which is basically a tracker. This is very useful for us to itemise the start and end of tasks to evaluate the resources required, based on price. So it's very valuable. It is important to be able to inspect the items required in a project.

The communication could work better, especially for the development team. The important thing is that the tracker tools provide adequate communication, as do other tools. It seems to be lacking in DevOps and is an area which could be improved. We also need to improve publishing in production. In the future, we would like Azure DevOps to work with automated tasks regarding publishing. Better integration with existing source code is another area, which would benefit from improvement. The search repository could be more comprehensive, and visualisations could be optimised, further.

We have been using Azure DevOps for around two years. We are a Microsoft partner, so we use Azure DevOps as part of that partnership.

Stability is excellent. Initially, we had some problems with performance, but nowadays it's okay. Maybe they improved the server.

It's good scalability, but we need to improve the process by understanding it a lot more.

We never actually contacted support. The best plan is to read through all the documentation, but getting the right documentation for your specific project is not always easy to find, as there is so much to go through.

It's average, because we need to research what we are trying to achieve, and the platform has rich functionality. This is a good thing, but it can also mean setup is very complicated. However, we usually find that after testing more, we find our way around what we are trying to achieve.

Our deployment took about three months, as we tracked it. Following that period, we needed another month to integrate a new component into the setup. We implemented it ourselves, with one of our team. We have about 10 users using Azure DevOps, but we have 2 people to provide the deployment out of those. These are developers. We have a small team for DevOps, including the manager. We need our staff to be flexible and agile in our team to take on various DevOps tasks.

As a Microsoft Partner, you get a discount on the pricing. Licensing costs are around $80 a month for DevOps, but for Azure, it is about $200 a month.

We tried other tools, but Azure DevOps has a richer toolset, and it fits in better with our process. To some extent, as we are a Microsoft partner, we didn't seriously consider other options. However, we did look at Jira and Gitlab as potential alternatives.

I would rate Azure DevOps as an 8 out of 10. I would ensure that DevOps' use is planned, in detail, including the implementation before using the software. I would also ensure you have a thorough knowledge of the main components of the system. This will ultimately save hours of work.

We are using this solution for CI/CD projects, for Scrum, Agile planning, testing, and business management system solutions. 

We are also using it for continuous integration, and continuous delivery of DevOps.

I am also using the Git Repositories, which is the main source control for me in the organization. We were using it on-premises and now planning to move it to the Cloud.

They are calling it repository and they are supporting an old protocol, which is a popular protocol called Git repository.

The most valuable features of this solution are the CI/CD pipeline, and the testing automation.

It's good that they are bringing more options to this environment, and to deploy to virtual machines.

The testing agents needs to be improved, they need to work on it.

They can enhance the areas related to continuous integration and build automation. They can add more technologies for the build.

The integration with the Azure infrastructure as a code and include more templates for infrastructure as a code in the continuous integration phase and the build phase.

They can add more flexibility to the continuous deployment.

Artifact management is also an area that needs some enhancements.

I think automation and integration with the CI/CD lifecycle it's good but it's using agents.

I am using a different tool for testing automation because I have not found any use cases on it. This feature is not covered. I'm using only testing and business management. I'm not using the testing automation feature that is provided by Azure DevOps.

I would like to see more integration with other platforms and more flexibility.

They have to add more features such as schedules and more flexibility in the platform. This will allow me to build my space and time based on the schedule and based on a calendar.

I would also like to see a release calendar so that I can plan my releases based on my sprints. 

This is required and it would give this solution more maturity. Between Scrum, Agile Planning, or Project planning with the build and deploy prophecies.

I have been using Microsoft Azure DevOps for three years.

We are using the latest version of this solution.

It's a stable solution. We have not experienced any issues.

It's a scalable product. We have more than 50 users in our organization using this solution.

I plan to continue using it in the future.

Previously, I used TeamCity, Jenkins, I used Chef, and many other technologies.

The initial setup is straightforward, it's a cloud service, so it's plug and play.

I would recommend Microsoft Azure DevOps for other users who are interested in using it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The key thing I find benefits me is the ability to track right from the feature and determine what has happened. I have a direct link to the test and the metrics that are available.

There are a lot of helpful features available for tracking dependencies.

The dashboard could be improved. Although there is flexibility in configuring it, there are some metrics that we have to configure ourselves. Improving the metrics that are readily available on the dashboard would be very helpful.

I would like to see better integration with third-party solutions, where if they are part of the DevOps pipeline then the reporting could be made available on the dashboard.

Having some form of check modeling integrated into Azure would be useful.

I have been using Azure DevOps for the past four years.

We have had no issues in terms of stability.

The offerings in terms of scalability are good.

We have not had to depend much on Microsoft support for DevOps and project management. However, I can say that the general support that we get for Azure is good.

I have some experience with Jira from Atlassian, although I have worked with Microsoft Team Foundation Server from the beginning.

The initial setup was straightforward. While we were migrating, we had training from Microsoft, which was helpful.

I haven't really looked into other options.

Overall, this is a good product and one that I recommend. The features it has have helped us, especially with tracking dependencies.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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.