Azure DevOps vs. CMiC Construction Platform

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.

Incentivized

CMiC is a robust platform best suited for large companies with resources for implementation and management of the program. One analogy is CMiC is like a droid phone where the user must decide how to use all the features of the program (as opposed to an iPhone where most configuration decisions are made for the user). Smaller companies with limited resources can struggle with CMiC both with the expense and configuration.

Incentivized

• Utilize Git as a repository to share work between multiple users
• Ability to configure Pipelines to build containers to run virtual deployments and testing scripts.
• Split individual tasks and relate to master documents for quick navigation and ability to see overall picture of project.
• Track status of each task
• Integrate with Git to utilize branches, merging, approvals, history, etc.

Incentivized

• The user interface is similar to that of other project management software applications so folks in our company that had previously used other applications have been able to switch over fairly easily.
• I really like the software and it was much less expensive than other applications.
• I like the mobile application so that our superintendents can view the documentation on their phones.
• I really like the punch list capability mobile field, however, we have a hard time getting our superintendents to use it for some reason.

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.

• Needs to be more user friendly on the mobile side of the platform. Ease of use is key here.
• There is not much instruction or support in standing up some programs like deploying ECM for outlook, making Collaboration Gateway work, or setting up the system for getting Plans available on the mobile devices.
• Security configuration is extremely detailed and spread throughout the system. It is extremely hard to make adjustments to a person's security unless you know exactly where to look, which requires years of experience but shouldn't.

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

This is a platform that would continue to be in the best interest for our company. I just hope that CMiC support removes the gaps between the enhancements that they create to better the system to what they currently have

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

I believe it isn't easy to use and is unintuitive. Undecipherable error messages appear throughout the application without indicating what is wrong or how to correct it, in my experience. The terminology on the screens is specific to Canada, which adds to the confusion.

Incentivized

Sometimes since this is a cloud based product the system can become slow but we haven’t had any issues of availability without CMiC first letting us know it would be down

Incentivized

Reports are pretty shown to run but general pages typically load pretty quick.

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

The support team [has] been in touch with our deployment team and has given them effective guidance up to completion. It has helped us in [the] best methods of resource allocation and secure record-keeping process. We have tracked all our billing information and made the right payments with documentation and avoided [unnecessary losses]. [The] support team has [to] lead our teams to the right channels and empowering our team with the right skills for maximum production.

Incentivized

The training was on system functions and not really how best to use it for our business. It would have been nice to be provided recommendations for use rather than just a blank slate of functionality.

Incentivized

I felt the training was good and the trainers knew the software.

Incentivized

Was not part of the process.

Incentivized

Lots of confusion between sales and implementation regarding what was included and not included...the security encountered a "bug" and made it extremely difficult to set up roles and individual responsibilities

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

CMiC Construction Platform is the best price point in the market. Others are revenue-based billings, and the annual fees reflect as such. CMiC Construction Platform support staff is generally amazing and offers real-time support on critical issues. The imaging and workflow functions are real-time savers. CMiC Construction Platform is generally a smaller and in touch organization that treats your team like their own and stays with you after the purchase.

Incentivized

CMiC has several key features that can either work together or independently depending on your companies needs.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Better project visibility, surely. I can step into a former project and see how well/poorly it was run.
• Forecasting underway - nearly complete with year 2.
• Cost status tracking - this has been valuable, especially when figuring out how much of a liquid budget is left over.

Incentivized