Apache Maven vs. Azure DevOps Services

Maven is great if you have an application with a lot of third-party dependencies and don’t want each developer to keep track of where the dependency can be downloaded. It’s also a great way to make it easy for a new developer to be able to build the application. It’s less suitable for simple projects without any third-party dependencies.

Incentivized

ADO is well suited for the visibility of day-to-day tasks and responsibilities as well as things such as Features, user stories, etc. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any scenario where it might not be well suited, as you can customize ADO to your liking to a degree.

• If you are building in the Java ecosystem, then Maven definitely has the biggest repository of artifacts needed for such projects.
• It has a very simple to use extendable architecture. Everything is configurable through the Pom.xml file which is very simple to follow.

Incentivized

• Flexible Requirements Hierarchy Management: AZDO makes it easy to track items such as features or epics as a flat list, or as a hierarchy in which you can track the parent-child relationship.
• Fast Data Entry: AZDO was designed to facilitate quick data entry to capture work items quickly, while still enabling detailed capture of acceptance criteria and item properties.
• Excel Integration: AZDO stands out for its integration with MS Excel, which enables quick updates for bulk items.

Incentivized

• Maven provides a very rigid model that makes customization tedious and sometimes impossible. While this can make it easier to understand any given Maven build, as long as you don’t have any special requirements, it also makes it unsuitable for many automation problems.
• Maven has few, built-in dependency scopes, which forces awkward module architectures in common scenarios like using test fixtures or code generation. There is no separation between unit and integration tests

Incentivized

• Column sorting when in filtered states.
• A way to show cross-team dependencies.
• A customized "From" field for notifications. Sometimes when a mail comes from Azure DevOps the teams do not realize that I am sending it
• A way to do online poker that doesn't require a plug-in.

Incentivized

I don't think our organization will stray from using VSTS/TFS as we are now looking to upgrade to the 2012 version. Since our business is software development and we want to meet the requirements of CMMI to deliver consistent and high quality software, this SDLC management tool is here to stay. In addition, our company uses a lot of Microsoft products, such as Office 365, Asp.net, etc, and since VSTS/TFS has proved itself invaluable to our own processes and is within the Microsoft family of products, we will continue to use VSTS/TFS for a long, long time.

Incentivized

The overall usability of Apache Maven is very good to us. We were able to incorporate it into our company's build process pretty quickly. We deployed it to multiple teams throughout the entire enterprise. We got good feedback from our developers stating that Apache Maven has simplified their build process. It also allowed to to standardize the build process for the entire enterprise, thus ensure that each development team is using the same, consistent process to build code.

Incentivized

Azure DevOps is a powerful, complex cloud application. As such there are a number of things it does great and something where there is room for improvement. One of those areas would be in usability. In my opinion it relies too much on search. There is no easy way to view all projects or to group them in a logical way. You need to search for everything.

Incentivized

I can't speak to the support, as I've never had issues. Apache Maven "just works," and errors were user errors or local nexus errors. Apache Maven is a great build/dependency management tool. I give it a 9/10 because occasionally the error message don't immediately indicate a solution...but again, those errors were always user or configuration errors, and the Maven documentation is extensive, so I don't find fault in Maven, but in its users.

Incentivized

When we've had issues, both Microsoft support and the user community have been very responsive. DevOps has an active developer community and frankly, you can find most of your questions already asked and answered there. Microsoft also does a better job than most software vendors I've worked with creating detailed and frequently updated documentation.

Incentivized

Was not part of the process.

Incentivized

Ant, Maven's opposing framework, is often a point of comparison. Although Ant does not require formal conventions, it is procedural in the sense that you must tell Ant exactly what to do and when. It also lacks a lifecycle, along with goal definition and dependencies. Maven, on the other hand, requires less work as it knows exactly where your source code is as long as the pom.xml file is generated.

Incentivized

Microsoft Planner is used by project managers and IT service managers across our organization for task tracking and running their team meetings. Azure DevOps works better than Planner for software development teams but might possibly be too complex for non-software teams or more business-focused projects. We also use ServiceNow for IT service management and this tool provides better analysis and tracking of IT incidents, as Azure DevOps is more suited to development and project work for dev teams.

Incentivized

• Apache Maven is an open source product from the Apache Software Foundation. Being free to use without any licensing constraints, we've been very happy with this product thus far.
• The software build and packaging times for our applications have improved greatly since our use of this tool.

Incentivized

• It provides a great IDE to make things easier, clear, and compact. It has always been a positive ROI
• It's worth the money. I don't think any other software could replace the VS. It has helped us a lot to making things ready on time
• The only thing I dislike is that it takes a lot of memory space when in an idle state

Incentivized