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)
TrackWise
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Sparta Systems headquartered in Hamilton offers TrackWise, a quality management system designed to allow the user to leverage existing investment to quickly implement a cost-effective quality management system. Also, TrackWise Digital helps users to track and manage internal, third-party, and regulatory audits.
N/A
Pricing
Azure DevOps
TrackWise
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.
We use Trackwise to record non-conformances that are reported by our clients and also the non-conformances that are found within the manufacturing floor during the manufacturing process. TrackWise is extremely easy to use and can be customized as per user needs. It is easy to create records and define child-parent relationships in the software. Users can pull customized reports and they can create dashboards as per the business demands to make sure they can track non-conformance resolution cycle time. We use TrackWise in integration with SAP which makes the system accessible to a wider user base. It is not only used to record the non-conformances, but also the part disposition details in cases where a part is supposed to be delivered from the client to us and in cases where the part is delivered to suppliers. We also use TrackWise to record the corrective actions and root cause for the reported issue. Trackwise is widely used to record Audits assessments in our organization. Trackwise is also used to report workmanship issues and to record the cycle time involved to resolve the issue and corrective actions taken to avoid the issue in the future.
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.
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.).
It is easy to use. Easy navigation. Flexible to customize. Real-time analytics help to track the record cycle time. Can be used by multiple departments for various business processes.
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.
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.
Trackwise is better than Arena. You need sign-offs before moving to the next step. While in Arena, you can complete the whole task and request sign off later. Not sure which is better for everyone, but I prefer to sign off before moving to the next step.
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.
