Azure DevOps Services vs. SpiraPlan

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.

We selected SpiraPlan because the workflow allows us to start simple without adopting an entire methodology. It suits small teams and single users really well.

• 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

• Flexible requirements organisation structure. I'm able to group and sub-group requirements as I see fit.
• Competitive product pricing. Paying by active use instead of registered user was the winning point.
• UI is straightforward and easy to use.

• 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

• Access from South East Asia is rather sluggish. Could be due to server location.
• Complimentary phone app to do simple tasks (e.g. create tasks, create requirements, add comments) offline would be beneficial because access to the internet can be an issue at the customer's environment.

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

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

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

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

Main differentiating factors: 1. Lightweight process 2. Plans based on active users instead of registered users.

• 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

• Allows us to manage simple IT requirements without major upfront costs. Allows us to expand our process complexity at our own pace.
• Slow UI response from a South East Asia country can make data entry a drag.