AzureDevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server, or TFS) is a test management and application lifecycle management tool, from Microsoft's Visual Studio offerings. To license Azure DevOps Server an Azure DevOps license and a Windows operating system license (e.g. Windows Server) for each machine running Azure DevOps Server.
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OpenText ALM Octane
Score 7.1 out of 10
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OpenText™ ALM Octane, formerly from Micro Focus, includes integrated planning, continuous integration, test management, and release management. With these capabilities, it helps Agile teams and DevOps toolchains to deliver high-quality software with insight, traceability, analytics-focused end-to-end visibility, and continuous quality.
Azure DevOps is good to use if you are all-in on the Microsoft Azure stack. It's fully integrated across Azure so it is a point-and-click for most of what you will need to achieve. If you are new to Azure make sure you get some outside experience to help you otherwise it is very easy to overcomplicate things and go down the wrong track, or for you to manually create things that come out of the box.
If someone is already using ALM Octane, then it is worth the pain to go through the upgrade process to get the current versions. If you need it to tie into Jira, it can do that. Just be prepared for a rough road. If you have some other product that you use for DevOps, PM, and QA, you will probably be better off sticking with what you have. DaVita also uses TFS, but not in a full implementation (i.e. not with a build server for code deployment), so for them, ALM makes a lot of sense. If you are using TFS with a build server, there are other methodologies that won't end up making you want to pull your hair out trying to make it integrate with what you are using.
Because we are a Microsoft Gold Partner we utilize most of their software and we have so much invested in Team Foundation Server now it would take a catastrophic amount of time and resources to switch to a different product.
For standard users the interface is friendly. but if you are a manager some tools are a little confusing to use, like the query system that you always need to create from scratch. Templates should be more helpful for queries and for standard procedures that you need to duplicate PBIs over time. The search history of Work Items is a little painful to use.
I have not had to use the support for Azure DevOps Server. There have never been any issues where I was not able to figure it out or quickly resolve. Our Scrum Master has used support before though, and the service has always been prompt and clear with a customer-focus
In my opinion, DevOps covers the development process end to end way better than Jira or GitHub. Both competitors are nice in their specific fields but DevOps provides a more comprehensive package in my opinion. It is still crazy to see that the whole suite can be used for free. The productivity increase we realized with DevOps is worth real money!
Micro Focus ALM Octane use at DaVita goes back beyond my starting with them three years ago. They have used it as part of DevOps as well as for performance measurement of software releases in combo with HP Performance Center (a great combination). Jira is well suited to managing bug reports and development processes with Agile and Scrum, but ALM Octane goes above and beyond that.
It has streamlined the pipeline and project management for our agile effort.
It has helped our agile team get organized since that is a new methodology being leveraged within the Enterprise.
The calendar has improved visibility into different OOOs across the project team since we all come from different departments across the larger organization.