Microsoft Azure DevOps : Plan Smarter, Collaborate Better

What Is Microsoft Azure DevOps? 

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a range of development systems that complement and improve your existing workflows. With five dedicated programs, Azure allows you to do everything from plan, track, and discuss work among your team, to test and ship software systems with confidence. With Microsoft's name behind it, you already know that this program is sure to help your business grow in a major way. 

Features 

Azure DevOps has five dedicated development systems, among those are: 

• Azure Boards: This is the organization HQ of the whole Azure range. It allows you to collaborate and stay on the same page with your team members with features like: Kanban boards, backlogs, team dashboards, and custom reporting. You can even customize your dashboards and workflows. 
• Azure Pipelines: Automatically build and test your code projects with pipelines. Design packages for any platform in any language with advanced workflows and features. 
• Azure Test Plans: This provides you with a browser-based test solution for explanatory, planned manual, and user acceptance testing. Test Plans allows you to capture rich data, test across web and desktop apps, and even get end-to-end traceability.  
• Azure Repos: Is a set of version control tools that you can use to manage your code with flexible, powerful Git hosting with effective code reviews for all your ideas.   
• Azure Artifacts: Artifacts is an extension that allows you to discover, install, and publish NuGet, npm, and Maven packages in Azure DevOps. 

What's more is, Azure DevOps allows you to access and install over 1,000+ extension, or even create your own. 

Pricing 

Pricing is divided between individual services and user licenses:

Individual Services:  

• Azure Pipelines already gives you 1,800 free minutes, plus one free parallel job. For additional parallel jobs, it will cost you $40/parallel job with unlimited minutes for Microsoft-Hosted, and $15/per parallel job with unlimited minutes for self-hosted. 
• Azure Artifacts already gives you two free gigabytes, for any additional gigabytes, it'll cost you: 2-10 GB = $2/GB, 10-100 GB = $1/GB, 100-1000 GB = $0.50/GB, 1000GB+ = $0.25/GB

User Licenses:  

• Basic Plan: First five users for free, then $6/per user/month. Includes: Azure Pipelines, Azure Boards, Azure Repos, Azure Artifacts
• Basic + Test Plans: $52/per user/month, includes all basic plan features, plus test planning, browser-based tests, rich-client tests, rich-client test execution, user acceptance testing, and centralized reporting. 

Reviews 

Azure DevOps has an average user rating of 8.8/10, users really like the wide range of features and programs that allow them to put their software to the test. However, users did talk about areas of improvement for Azure Artifact management, and the lack of security of the third-party plug-ins. 

What We Think 

Microsoft Azure DevOps is an extensive and rich software development tool that is sure to help any team looking to build an intuitive and great software system.