Adobe Target vs. Jenkins

If you're using the Adobe stack and tools to power your website, Target is a great solution to implement. I've utilized Target within two organizations, one running on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), and the other on Adobe Magento. I don't see how companies could harness the full capacity of Target without also having Adobe Analytics integrated. This is their 'secret sauce' and might not be a good solution for companies who are invested in Google Analytics 360. Integration was straightforward but did require support from the Adobe team to implement successfully. While Target is a great tool for digital teams to support, you'll need your tech team aligned and available to support implementation.

Incentivized

Jenkins is a highly customizable CI/CD tool with excellent community support. One can use Jenkins to build and deploy monolith services to microservices with ease. It can handle multiple "builds" per agent simultaneously, but the process can be resource hungry, and you need some impressive specs server for that. With Jenkins, you can automate almost any task. Also, as it is an open source, we can save a load of money by not spending on enterprise CI/CD tools.

Incentivized

• This application gives us an incredible integration with Adobe Analytics that allows its operation to be the best and determine the performance of our website.
• It offers us an analysis based on user behavior and a web page customization option to adapt and meet the needs of those users.

Incentivized

• Automated Builds: Jenkins is configured to monitor the version control system for new pull requests. Once a pull request is created, Jenkins automatically triggers a build process. It checks out the code, compiles it, and performs any necessary build steps specified in the configuration.
• Unit Testing: Jenkins runs the suite of unit tests defined for the project. These tests verify the functionality of individual components and catch any regressions or errors. If any unit tests fail, Jenkins marks the build as unsuccessful, and the developer is notified to fix the issues.
• Code Analysis: Jenkins integrates with code analysis tools like SonarQube or Checkstyle. It analyzes the code for quality, adherence to coding standards, and potential bugs or vulnerabilities. The results are reported back to the developer and the product review team for further inspection.

Incentivized

• This is something a lot of testing tools struggle with, but I think the WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") editor - or Visual Experience Composer (VEC) in Adobe terminology - could definitely use some work. It's a struggle to execute many tests beyond simple copy, color, placement changes, and even the features that do exist are often clunky if not altogether broken.
• The interface itself can be a bit counterintuitive in certain parts. If you are familiar with other tools, it's likely middle of the road in this respect; think much easier to understand than Monetate for instance, but a far cry from the simplicity of an Optimizely.
• It can be a bit buggy from time to time. The worst example is the frequency at which the tool will fail to save due to an error, but not inform you of this until you try to save, at which point your only option is to log out, log back in, and make all of your updates once again. It can become an extreme pain point at times, and I personally have just gotten into the habit of saving every couple of minutes to avoid a massive loss of productivity.

Incentivized

• The UI could be slightly better, it feels kind of like the 90s, but it works well.
• An easier way to filter jobs other than views on the dashboard.
• An easier way to read the console logs when tests do fail.

Incentivized

We have a team of people trained on how to use the application and it integrates well with the other Adobe products we use. Our future roadmap of testing will require some complex scenarios which we hope Target will be able to accomplish

We have a certain buy-in as we have made a lot of integrations and useful tools around jenkins, so it would cost us quite some time to change to another tool. Besides that, it is very versatile, and once you have things set up, it feels unnecessary to change tool. It is also a plus that it is open source.

Incentivized

The recent UI update is a complete mess. It is difficult to navigate and find features that previously existed. The reactiveness of the page depending on window size is also ridiculous and it is absurd that depending on how large your window is, entire columns of functions will disappear with no indication that they are missing. The usability of the tool has fallen off a cliff.

Incentivized

Jenkins streamlines development and provides end to end automated integration and deployment. It even supports Docker and Kubernetes using which container instances can be managed effectively. It is easy to add documentation and apply role based access to files and services using Jenkins giving full control to the users. Any deviation can be easily tracked using the audit logs.

Incentivized

i don't think we use the full functionalities of the tool, but to use the full functions, it's almost impossible (Too hard)

The bottleneck is never the software program

No, when we integrated this with GitHub, it becomes more easy and smart to manage and control our workforce. Our distributed workforce is now streamlined to a single bucket. All of our codes and production outputs are now automatically synced with all the workers. There are many cases when our in-house team makes changes in the release, our remote workers make another release with other environment variables. So it is better to get all of the work in control.

Incentivized

On several occasions, we have had the need to ask for help from the Adobe Target support team, and I must say that they have provided us with an excellent experience, as they take care of solving the problems quickly and with high precision

Incentivized

As with all open source solutions, the support can be minimal and the information that you can find online can at times be misleading. Support may be one of the only real downsides to the overall software package. The user community can be helpful and is needed as the product is not the most user-friendly thing we have used.

Incentivized

The instructor that came to train us was awesome and this training was very useful. I would recommend it for anyone who is going to be using this software. I only mark it lower because it is an added expense to an already expensive product, and a lot of the training covered the "Target" portion of the software (which again, we didn't use)

The training was very easy to understand, however it would have been more useful to my development team than me. It was also primarily over-the-phone, which is never as easy to follow as in-person. We ended up scheduling and paying for an in-person training session to supplement the online/phone training because it wasn't helpful enough.

Implement using a global mBox on the page so you can change any and everything over the traditional method. Traditional method is good if you do not have technical web dev resources, do not know Javascript/jQuery, or you have money to blow on mBox calls. Global deployment reduces mBox calls and allows you to touch many parts of the page easily. A lot more customizable

It is worth well the time to setup Jenkins in a docker container. It is also well worth to take the time to move any "Jenkins configuration" into Jenkinsfiles and not take shortcuts.

Incentivized

We seriously considered another software but because we use so many other Adobe products this made the most sense for us. If you are not dependent on other Adobe software and are a smaller company, in my opinion, Target may not be the best fit.

Incentivized

Overall, Jenkins is the easiest platform for someone who has no experience to come in and use effectively. We can get a junior engineer into Jenkins, give them access, and point them in the right direction with minimal hand-holding. The competing products I have used (TravisCI/GitLab/Azure) provide other options but can obfuscate the process due to the lack of straightforward simplicity. In other areas (capability, power, customization), Jenkins keeps up with the competition and, in some areas, like customization, exceeds others.

Incentivized

• We have been able to run specific A/B tests that have shown an increase in conversion, which in turn has led to very large banked sales numbers for the year.
• We have been able to prove that using and automated Merchandising process did not decrease conversion. This allowed us to greatly increase efficiency by opening up resource time.

• Faster Time-to-Market: Jenkins automate the build, testing, and deployment process, enabling faster feedback and continuous improvement.
• Improved Quality: Jenkins automatically run unit tests and integration tests, ensuring that code changes meet the necessary quality standards.
• Cost Savings: Jenkins is an open-source tool that is free to use

Incentivized