Item: Azure DevOps Services
Rating: 10
Author: Swagata Bhattacharyya

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is used across the organization. We use it for tracking tasks as well as for CICD.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Task management
Capacity Management
CICD

Cons

Once you add a new sprint, it does not automatically reflect in the left panel of work items. You have to select the iteration under default teams settings. This is a bit confusing and difficult to figure out if you don't know.
When a task is marked as Resolved, the remaining time does not become 0 like it happens when you close the task. It may be a good idea to reset it to 0 for resolved tasks as well.
The system allows you to close a user story which has open tasks under it. A warning mentioning this while closing the user story will be good.

Return on Investment

The code version control, tasks, capacity all are in one place. So we don't have to move between tools to get the overall state of the project
It allows adding users based on their email addresses, so if tasks are outsourced, it is very easy to include members external to the organization in the project team
It can be shared with the client which leads to more transparency

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.

Other Software Used

Visual Studio IDE, Microsoft SQL Server, Zoom, Skype

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Using Microsoft Visual Studio Team System

Users and Roles

20 - Software/web delevopment

Using VSTS

Usability

Apart from the time zone issue mentioned in a previous step, everything else works great for our project. We have started using the auto build functionality after checking in the source code which has saved us a lot of time. The iterations help us manage work efficiently. We are very happy with the way we are able to manage the project using VSTS.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using	None

Easy Tasks

Adding users to capacity and marking their planned leaves is a great feature
Love the way we can have source code control linked with the user stories
The burn chart is great to get a progress update at one glance

Difficult Tasks

I an revising this review specifically to add this suggestion. We have a globally distributed team who work in different time zones. If you consider this scenario...I am in EST and we have some developers working during India business hours. Each developer works Monday to Friday, from 9am to 5pm IST and 7 hours capacity per day. On Monday, say at 1pm EST I am looking at the sprint and I see 35 hours for a developer. It will show up as green but it is actually red because his day has already ended and he has 28 hours left for the week. If we can add the time zone or working hours along with the capacity for each user, that will be awesome.

Comments

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All under one umbrella