Intuitive and Powerful Tool for Microsoft-Aligned Product Teams
May 01, 2019

Intuitive and Powerful Tool for Microsoft-Aligned Product Teams

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS)

Azure DevOps is the standard at my company for software source code management and project/requirements management. The cloud-hosted software is being used across all teams to coordinate and track development activities, align release planning, and track work items for testing and verification. Previously we used tools such as Rally and Perforce to serve these needs, but we have standardized on Azure DevOps going forward.
  • 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.
  • Central Dashboard of Development Metrics: AZDO nests its dashboards in workflow-specific tracks, which is useful. Still, I'd like to see a home page personalized for each user which provides relevant updates on the most recent work items (updates to features, etc.) and work progress.
  • Complex Queries: AZDO is great for simple queries, but complex queries and the display of results doesn't always produce intuitive results. For example, sorting and drag/drop can be unreliable in some views. I suspect the AZDO team will work out these issues over the next few releases.
  • Lack of Themes: AZDO allows for the tracking of Epics and Initiatives, but there doesn't seem to be a structured interface for tracking product investment themes.
  • Fast Data Entry: Our teams have been able to capture product requirements and specification data very quickly for a large number of products.
  • Cross-Org Collaboration: The ease of use has improved the speed at which product management users can onboard and become active with the tool.
  • Reports: The intuitive ability to create and share reports have reduced the amount of time creating extracts from previous tools.
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.