Azure DevOps Services

Formerly VSTS

For small enterprises to big, it applies to all for efficient and effective product management with full traceability in built.

Azure DevOps was a one-stop solution for sprint planning, Test planning Pipeline integration as we have dev, test, and sandbox env and wanted to have the latest/clean code in all env. It was also helpful in creating dashboards showing daily progress by developing charts, burn-down graphs, defect tracking, and follow-ups.

Azure DevOps is great for agile software development with larger teams as the included features for managing user stories, sprints, and backlogs allow larger dev teams to more easily plan, track, and deliver software releases. It is also great for CI/CD because of the options for automating build, testing, and deployment processes. The integration with various Azure services makes it easy to deploy in cloud environments, and therefore it is an ideal tool for us as we use Microsoft Azure extensively for hosting our business applications. It's less useful for smaller projects or individual developers as many of the features will simply never be used, and there are more lightweight tools available. There are also better tools available for task tracking in non-software development projects or if your organization relies heavily on non-Microsoft products.

Very good to have your CI/CD delivery process set up for Azure Cloud. Maybe better integration with external third-party cloud providers, and be a bit more cloud agnostic.

It's great to use when you use Scrum, Repos, and CI/CD. This way, you don't need multiple applications, but you can just use Azure DevOps. For development, I find it pretty good. You can link your items to your Pull request, and you will be able to see what changes have been made. The only downside is that if you want to make your board visible to a lot of stakeholders, it won't be that easy.

We have been using it for at least 5 years and it's rock-solid in its function and always adds new options and features. We started using it because of its free 5 user private repositories function. Now GitHub does the same (and it's also from Microsoft) but Azure DevOps Services offers more options and tools, so we will stick with this service.

All Microsoft ecosystem products are well integrated and support easier build automation. Especially if you use TFS and Visual Studio, this is very well suited. They are flexible in bringing open-source software build supports and have a great marketplace with lots of Azure DevOps Services (formerly VSTS) extensions available.

It is well suited for large and distributed teams, developing cloud-native applications in a fast fail-fast approach. It will enable seamless development and support different platforms in integrations. It is of less value if the teams are small and located together and also in cases where the application runs on legacy software.

Azure DevOps, on the whole, is very easy to set up and use if you have any experience with Agile processes. The initial barriers to entry are extremely low as the first 5 users can leverage the tool for free. I found the overall feature/functionality easier to use and more approachable than similar tools. It is also leaps and bounds better than TFS if you haven't looked at it in a while. If you are already a git user, this is directly integrated with git repos, making the transition easy. The tool is also integrated with many other Microsoft products, so if you are a Microsoft-centric shop, you can leverage the broader ecosystem.

No matter how many developers you have within the company, a robust source code control/DevOps pipeline is a must. When a new software development project is needed it can be initiated within DevOps by any team member/manager. The project can be tracked from start to finish with alerts and message ability directly in the product. The QA team can also monitor and provide feedback directly within the product.

Azure DevOps is by far the leader out there. If you are a Microsoft shop there is no need to look elsewhere. This will handle everything you have with ease and then some. If you have older code then you may need to build some customizations to make it work but anything recent is seamless.

For development teams with a history of Microsoft tools alignment, Azure DevOps provides familiar patterns and interfaces. And for product management / product marketing users, the use of use of data entry and the Excel integration provide for easy on-ramps for learning and proficiency development. For teams that have used tools such as FogBugz, the boards and case layouts may take a little getting used to.

Team System is the best solution if you use Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise as your main development platform, especially if you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. Even though it can be used with any development project management framework it is better in an informal environment using Scrum.

For large project or a large team, the product is well suited when this technology is already implemented, because nowadays for version control there are products like GitHub. For a company who is concerned about security, this is a way to make their projects accessible from their TFS, and no one can use it for personal use. This is also useful for maintaining a site that a group of developers are working on, where their work items need to change, like peer test, peer review etc.

VSTS is a software that can be used by advanced programmers, and it is also an excellent option in a team of developers that begin to train and become familiar with an IDE. It can be used in large development teams or in particular developments is perfectly adapted to the needs of the developer.

If you are building a build system for a Microsoft product that doesn't have a lot of steps, VSTS is something that should be looked at. If you want to deploy your application to Azure it is even better. Running Visual Studio to build, run tests and perform load and performance tests works very well. Just be prepared to have your initial setup take some time.

Anyone who is currently using TFS should migrate to VSTS immediately. Having maintained TFS servers in the past, this is substantially easier. Additionally, the web interface has gotten easier to use and features to move work items between projects has improved greatly. We're also in the process of migrating away from our Atlassian toolset - so it gives you an idea of how versatile the product really is.

Well suited for .net shops, distributed/offshore outsourcing, or small scale development. Less suitable for isolated or modular component development. Although the API is suitable, the licensing cost may be prohibitive for open source projects. VSTS is an end to end change management and collaboration tool that has a robust feature set for the enterprise. A VS Code-like analog companion similar to VSTS for no charge would be excellent.

I believe it can be used in all projects, big or small. All projects are broken down into subtasks and VSTS is a great tool to manage subtasks and capacity.

VSTS is recommended in a scenario where a very lot of projects have to be managed on premise. The possibility to mix the on premise version with the online version allows to create customized scenario to easily adapt to every teams and technologies.
The task management integrated in the IDE is a plus.

VSTS has grown at a rate of knots over the years and it truly is becoming a one stop solution for full Application Lifetime Management.

We can create customizable dashboards and they are very easy to create. Work items are customizable too so that no relevant information is left out. We can also get Excel reports from it for the overall health status of the pipeline.

If you want a quickly-deployable, almost-zero-configuration-needed, highly-mantainable, low-cost source control to keep track of your changes, as well as providing a (somewhat) effective Agile management to your team, especially if your code is being written in Visual Studio, look no further. VSTS will provide you with all the tooling needed.

If you're using Visual Studio as your IDE, the integration is easy. If you have MSDN, it's included. No servers to maintain, no worrying about upgrades, patches, backups, etc..

[Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is] Less appropriate when Java is mainly used.