Azure DevOps

Overview

Azure DevOps is Microsoft's integrated platform for the software lifecycle. Azure Boards carries the planning side: work items such as user stories, bugs and tasks, backlogs, sprints, Kanban boards, queries and customisable work item types and workflows for Agile, Scrum, Basic or CMMI processes. Around it sit Azure Repos for Git or Team Foundation Version Control with branch policies and pull requests, Azure Pipelines for CI/CD to Azure, AWS, Google Cloud or on-premises targets, Azure Test Plans for manual and exploratory testing, and Azure Artifacts for NuGet, npm, Maven, Python and Universal packages. Sprint capacity is set per team member in hours a day with days off, and dashboards, queries and the Analytics service feed reporting through to Power BI. The first five users are free, stakeholders who only view boards and dashboards are unlimited and free, and the same services can be run on your own infrastructure as Azure DevOps Server.

Best for software teams that want planning, source control and CI/CD in one Microsoft stack.

Azure DevOps earns its place where the plan, the code and the pipeline should share one login and one permission model, which makes it a natural fit for Microsoft-centric engineering organisations and an awkward one for teams whose work never reaches a repository. The planning side assumes software: capacity is counted in hours against tasks, not in client projects or budgets, so it is a poor substitute for an agency or consulting tool. Licensing is unusually kind at the small end, since five users cost nothing and read-only stakeholders never count, and the on-premises edition remains a real answer where source has to stay in the building. The headline per-user figure is only part of the bill, though: build minutes, package storage and test plans are metered separately, and a busy pipeline can outgrow the free allowance well before the seat count does.

Key Facts

Features

Task planning

Yes, Azure Boards with work items, backlogs, sprints, Kanban boards, queries and customisable work item types and workflows

Resource planning

Sprint capacity per team member in hours a day, with days off, activity split across teams and capacity bars against remaining work

Time tracking

Estimates rather than a timer: tasks carry Original Estimate and Remaining Work, which feed capacity and the sprint burndown

Reporting and controlling

Yes, dashboards with widgets, queries and charts, plus the Analytics service and Power BI reporting

Integrations and API

Yes, REST API, service hooks and extensions from the Visual Studio Marketplace

Integrations

• GitHub
• Visual Studio
• VS Code
• IntelliJ
• Eclipse
• Android Studio
• Xcode
• Power BI
• Azure
• AWS
• Google Cloud
• Docker
• Kubernetes

Deployment and Support

Deployment

• Cloud (SaaS)
• Browser-based
• On-premise

Support

• Community forum

Onboarding

• Documentation and knowledge base

Company size

• Small and mid-sized
• Enterprise

Suitability

The table combines the industries the vendor addresses with the company sizes the tool is aimed at. An empty cell means the combination is not stated, not that it is ruled out.

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• Basic, first five users

  $0

  The first five users are free, with unlimited free stakeholder access on top.

• Basic

  $6

  Per user and month beyond the first five.

• Basic + Test Plans

  $52

  Per user and month. Adds Azure Test Plans.

• Azure Pipelines

  $40

  Per extra Microsoft-hosted parallel job and month with unlimited minutes; one free job with 1,800 minutes is included. Self-hosted jobs cost $15 each, with one free.

• Azure Artifacts

  $2

  Per GiB and month after the first 2 GiB, falling to $1 above 10 GiB, $0.50 above 100 GiB and $0.25 above 1,000 GiB.

Best For

• Technology

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