Azure DevOps

Honestly, having everything under one roof in Azure DevOps has been a massive change for our team. Managed to get all our dev and test code into Azure DevOps Git repos and it just makes version control so much smoother since it is all linked. We use the Sprint Boards daily to track our progress from the dev side over to the test side and it is great because I can see exactly which user story a bug belongs to without jumping between tools. Managing the PBIs and features in the same place where we write our test plans just makes the lifecycle feel very connected. The way Azure Test Plans and Pipelines talk to each other is easily the best part for me. Since our test plans are right there, we can trigger our pipelines and see the results update our test suites automatically. It is so much better than the old way of manually updating the spread sheets or the test cases or trying to sync up different platforms. I can create a bug directly from a failed test run in the pipeline and it automatically links the logs and the specific PBI we were testing. It gives our team a single source of truth which has really helped with our sprint planning and making sure we don't miss any edge cases. It's also not perfect all the time because when you have so much data in one place the interface can get a little overwhelming. Sometimes, it feels like there is a big of a lag when I am trying to load a large backlog or a complex test plan with hundreds of cases. Also, permission management is still a bit of a headache, just like it was with the agents, because there are so many levels of access across boards and repos. But overall, I would never go back to using separate tools for everything. Having the requirements and the test code in one place just makes us way more efficient, especially when we’re trying to hit those tight sprint deadlines.

Azure DevOps is strong as an all in one platform for storing code in Git version control, deploying code with CI/CD, and ticketing for SCRUM workflows. All of its areas perform their functions well and allow for sufficient integration and customization. The platform starts to have some inconsistencies around the user interface and REST API it provides. The UI for the different functions and sections can be inconsistent with each other and often make unintuitive design choices which make the platform hard to navigate at times. The REST API is very capable but some of the endpoints are undocumented and I have run into times where desired functionality is missing. The platforms CI/CD pipelines are extensively customizable and powerful. They are written in a very feature rich YAML format which includes if statements, loops, and the ability to define and reuse sections as templates. This has been very beneficial to my team as we use the templates and logic to enforce standardization and security policies across our organization.