Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System) is an agile development product that is an extension of the Microsoft Visual Studio architecture. Azure DevOps includes software development, collaboration, and reporting capabilities.
$2
per GB (first 2GB free)
Beyond Compare
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Beyond Compare from Scooter Software headquartered in Madison is a utility for comparing different version of documents and seeing the differences. It also allows changes to be merged and synchronized.
N/A
Pricing
Azure DevOps
Beyond Compare
Editions & Modules
Azure Artifacts
$2
per GB (first 2GB free)
Basic Plan
$6
per user per month (first 5 users free)
Azure Pipelines - Self-Hosted
$15
per extra parallel job (1 free parallel job with unlimited minutes)
Azure Pipelines - Microsoft Hosted
$40
per parallel job (1,800 minutes free with 1 free parallel job)
Azure DevOps works well when you’ve got larger delivery efforts with multiple teams and a lot of moving parts, and you need one place to plan work, track it properly, and see how everything links together. It’s especially useful when delivery and development are closely tied and you want backlog items, code and releases connected rather than spread across tools. Where it’s less of a fit is for small teams or simple pieces of work, as it can feel like more setup and process than you really need, and non-technical users often struggle with the interface. It also isn’t great if you want instant, easy programme-level views or a very visual planning experience without putting time into configuration.
Beyond Compare is extremely good at the task of comparisons, whether that is text file comparisons or folder comparisons. It does a great job of easily highlighting the differences for users, and giving them the option of merging (in the case of text files) or synchronizing (in the case of folders.) In either case, no one on my team has ever had any reason to reach for another different tool.
I did mention it has good visibility in terms of linking, but sometimes items do get lost, so if there was a better way to manage that, that would be great.
The wiki is not the prettiest thing to look at, so it could have refinements there.
For date formatting discrepancies the software does not automatically mark the dates as equivalent; for instance ‘2019/10/15’ vs. ‘15-OCT-2019’. This would be considered a difference.
The columns/report must be ordered similarly. If extra data is available in one file, it should be removed or extra rows will be marked as differences.
For spreadsheet comparison, the user must save the file on the proper tab and then “recompare” within the tool. There is no way to switch between sheets in the software.
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.
It's a great help to get more information about new feature release and stay updated on what the dev team is working on. I like how easy it is to just login and read through the work items. Each work item has basic details: Title, Description, Assigned to, State, Area (what it belongs to), and iteration (when it’s worked on). See image above.They move through different states (New → Discovery → Ready for Prod → etc.).
Again, given the intuitive nature of this program, there is barely any learning curve needed. It is simple, reliable, accurate, and just one of those tools you always have with you and rarely think about until you don't have it. Then it is a case of OMG what was I thinking? This program is just very easy to use, and that makes it more valuable to me than some of my other software tools that cost significantly more.
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.
I have never needed support for this product other than learning how to use a new feature I was not familiar with. User forums and user groups that have used this product for their own purposes have always sufficed for anything that I needed help using with the product. Some of the features could be a little better outlined, but overall very easy to use.
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.
We've tried many: Code Compare, Meld, UltraCompare, and WinMerge. None of them have the depth of features and speed to handle the work we throw at Beyond Compare. The multi-tabbed interface allows us to sync multiple servers at the same time. It understands multiple file types, metadata, and encodings. It's the best tool for the job.
We have saved a ton of time not calculating metrics by hand.
We no longer spend time writing out cards during planning, it goes straight to the board.
We no longer track separate documents to track overall department goals. We were able to create customized icons at the department level that lets us track each team's progress against our dept goals.
