Azure DevOps vs. CircleCI

DevOps is much more user friendly than Git itself. There is a more GUI-centric interface, tighter integration with the Azure / Entra architecture. For those of use in the Microsoft-sphere, it really is excellent for code-centric project management. I rate this as an 8 because it does not seem quite as well suited for fully functional / non-code project aspects in implementation. Nor does it have customer / end-user portal / front end for easy reporting and insight.

Incentivized

CircleCI is perfect for a CI/CD pipeline for an app using a standard build process. It'll take more work for a complex build process, but should still be up to the task unless you need a lot of integrations with other tools. If you have a big team and can spare someone to focus full time on just the CI/CD tools, maybe something like Jenkins is better, but if you're just looking to get your app built, tested, and delivered without a huge amount of effort, CircleCI is probably your preferred tool.

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

• GitHub integration is seamless. Never had a problem with it missing commits.
• Robust test environment. I used Travis in the past but tests would sporadically time out for no clear reason, haven't had that happen with CircleCI
• Poweful YAML-based configuration in the GitHub repo itself. I don't like CI tools like Semaphore that push you into managing your CI/CD through a web UI, I prefer managing a config file and never having to log in to the CI tool.

Incentivized

• 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.
• It could improve the search slightly better.

• It would be nice if you could configure everything via the YML file. Some things are only available via YML, and some things are actually only available in the UI, and many other things have full overlap between the two. I'm sure there are good reasons for this, but this is a pretty confusing situation. For example, certain PHP versions are only available on certain Ubuntu releases. Configuring the PHP version is done via the .yml file, but configuring the Ubuntu release being used for the build has to be done in the UI. This can easily lead to things not building properly.

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

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.).

Incentivized

The reliability & speed, it just works. The ability to spin up macOS runners and Docker containers on demand without managing hardware is a huge win. The Orbs system makes integrating with AWS and Slack incredibly easy, saving us weeks of custom scripting and providing real-time updates in our Slack channel. This makes it easy for us to track and ensures that everyone involved knows the status. Of course, it has drawbacks related to configuration complexity and, in some cases, cost transparency, but overall, it is an industry-standard, robust tool that solves our core infrastructure problems well.

Incentivized

It's pretty snappy, even with using workflows with multiple steps and different docker images. I've seen builds take a long time if it's really involved, but from what I can tell, it's still at least on par if not faster than other build tools.

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

Unless you have a reasonably large account, you're going to be mainly stuck reading their documentation. Which has improved somewhat over the years but is still extremely limited compared to a platform like Digital Ocean who invested in the documentation and a community to ensure it's kept up to date. If you can't find your answer there, you can be stuck.

Incentivized

Was not part of the process.

Incentivized

We love the multi-tier hierarchy in Azure DevOps for tasks, with epics, features, stories, bugs and tasks all available in a nice nested hierarchy. It's not as pretty as monday.com and doesn't work as well OOTB as ServiceNow SPM however.

Incentivized

CircleCI shines with its specialized infrastructure. Its dedicated macOS runners ensure blazing-fast iOS builds, while intelligent Docker layer caching significantly reduces backend build times and costs. The ability to SSH directly into failed builds dramatically accelerates debugging. Furthermore, its certified Orbs provide standardized, secure integrations with AWS and Slack, reducing the stability and security risks often associated with unverified community plugins on competing platforms such as GitHub Actions.

Incentivized

• Increased dev team efficiency through more streamlined development processes and task automation.
• Improved quality of software deployments due to better source control, automated testing, and release management options available in DevOps.
• Better collaboration between the dev team, business analysts, and agile project managers.

Incentivized

• Continuous Integration saves time for developers to manually handle deploying code.
• Ability to build complex workflows with test suites catches bugs before they get to production - saving a lot of headache.
• The integrations with Slack and DataDog keep the entire company informed of builds and deploys, increasing our awareness and efficiency.

Incentivized