Azure DevOps Services

Formerly VSTS

GitHub seemed to be more of an open-source development environment and made it a little challenge to keep our source private and onsite at our own facilities. Gitlab did not have the full Dev Ops pipeline and seemed to have a lot of different bugs when using it. We used the VSTS product and continue to use it when it became Azure DevOps and have not had the types of issues described.

Azure DevOps covers way more than just an awesome Agile storyboard. The widgets, the reporting, the interaction with Power BI and the features that hook into pull requests and DevOps in general, go way beyond what your competitors offer. I find Azure DevOps easy to navigate and anytime I have had a question or concern, I have received a quick, answer from tech support.

Azure DevOps offers full lifecycle management from ideas to development to test and release. Everything is in one place and has traceability from inception to release, maintenance and retirement. The other systems only offer small parts of what Azure DevOps has. They offer loose integrations, but your organization will be missing that full lifecycle traceability with these tools.

Azure DevOps required the least amount of up front knowledge to get a pipeline up and running. Because of the built in activities, when I initially started working with this tool I didn't have to know anything other than where my code was stored. The rest was easy enough to figure out as I went. It didn't require me to build up any images to work, all of that was in an easy to use interface that was prebuilt and ready to go.

We have utilized multiple products in the past such as SVN, Visual Source Safe, Team Foundation Server, GitHub and more. For end to end full life cycle development none of them could come close to Azure DevOps. We are in the process of migrating everything for these old platforms over to Azure DevOps.

Azure DevOps was developed to implement the DevOps methodology. Other products, such as Redmine, are usually adapted to the methodology and it nevers fully complies with it.

If you are currently using Jenkins or Bitbucket as an ALM tool, then I would highly recommend taking a look at Azure DevOps as the integration to the Microsoft stack is extremely easy and versatile. Microsoft has invested heavily in getting this tool best in class with the support to match.

Azure DevOps is a complete DevOps suite with such a broad feature set it's very hard to find a competent competitor that does the same job in a similar fashion.

Mind manager has additional components which allow you to not just map out process workflows but also project plan.

Compared to other tools we have used, Microsoft STS has been a much more complete tool. Communication, collaboration, tracking, management, automation, testing, speed to production—all these areas have been improved since we started using Microsoft STS. We have been looking for ways to be more transparent as a department too and Microsoft VSTS has helped in that journey.

We are moving away from VSTS to Version One since Version One has a better end to end workflow for a product based team (where product and development work very closely together and need to access the same data and communicate in an efficient manner.)

For the last 4- 5 years I have only used VS. We can't imagine switching to another product. It is secure, reliable, intuitive, and easy to use. If we need to add compatibility of other language with this, then we need to simply add the Plugin and use it .

Microsoft Visual Studio was on the market when there were no other providers for this type of service. So if a company was already working on this technology, it will always provide a better output than if they migrated to a new one. However, when comparing GitHub with Microsoft Team System, it's very close, but GitHub is leading in this, in my view.

The versatility of Visual Studio Team System then allows choosing it over the other options, having the possibility of having all the necessary tools to carry out a development project is definitely the reason why it is the mandatory option to choose. The other options are open source options so for emerging teams may seem to be the right ones. However, it is convenient to try the free version before making a choice.

VSTS is great if you final source system is Microsoft based. Everything work well together and once you learned how use VSTS it isn't difficult to build more build systems. If your staff are used to the methods Microsoft uses, their time learning VSTS won't be as difficult as staff that do not know the Microsoft way of doing things. If, however, you are going to build non-Microsoft bases applications, such as Java, Ruby or even Python, Jenkins is probably a better choice.

I much prefer VSTS over JIRA and/or Trello. A lot more functionality and more intuitive.

VSTS is better than these options because there is integration with git and other services. Code reviews, branching, etc. are easier with VSTS. Although, Trello and Excel are probably better if you have smaller teams and smaller projects, I believe it isn't scalable. But if you are looking to use agile and grow your organization (or your organization is already big) then use VSTS.

Easier to use than GitHub, but it comes at a cost. Although you can script VSTS, the online version could use a more substantial editor. Those who remember project Monaco and its current implementation in Azure, App Service Editor, will be disappointed if looking for more of an Apache Orion-like online editor.

Unlike the other tools I have used, VSTS has everything under one roof. The other tools I have used are specific to a particular requirement like code version control, task management etc. VSTS on the other hand, has all aspects of the project tied together which makes it more useful.

Excellent tool when used in Microsoft technology environment.

We are a Microsoft technology based company and the 80% of our projects are .NET and are developed with Visual Studio. The VSTS is the natural partner of our development day by day work. Our machines are running Windows Server 2012 and 2016 with Sql Server, so with VSTS we can continue to stay and to manage a known stack.

Being primarily Microsoft Developers and how VSTS integrates with Visual Studio it stood head and shoulders above other options for us at the time of making our initial decision.

Our TFS was dated and in some ways was quite crude. VSTS is thoroughly modern and I don't have to worry about updating it since MS is always updating VSTS. Also, VSTS has better integration with other products such as JIRA than our older TFS would. I am sure you could integrate TFS with anything, but it was some serious work.

With more functionality added, JIRA has become slow, whereas VSTS is a pleasure to use. Trac and JIRA do not show the entire health status of the pipeline like VSTS. Hygieia is open source and trying to achieve what VSTS does but it is not as mature yet.