Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is Microsoft's work tracking, Git hosting and CI/CD service for software teams, with test plans and package feeds, in the cloud or on-premises.

Azure DevOps lets a development group take a change from an idea on a board to reviewed code, an automated build and a tested release. It is a Microsoft product. Each organization runs as a cloud service at dev.azure.com, and Azure DevOps Server is the on-premises edition of the same platform. Work items link to commits and pull requests, so a change can be followed from the request that asked for it to the code that delivered it. Azure Boards tracks work items in backlogs ranked by dragging, on Kanban boards and in sprints set by iteration paths. Teams save and share work item queries, follow deliveries across teams on Delivery Plans and read velocity and burndown charts. Azure Repos hosts private Git repositories with pull requests, reviewer votes, branch policies and Git LFS. Azure Pipelines runs builds on Microsoft-hosted or self-hosted agents, and Azure Test Plans covers browser-based testing and user acceptance testing. Azure Artifacts keeps NuGet, npm, Maven and Python packages in feeds, and GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps adds code, dependency and secret scanning. Azure DevOps suits software teams that want planning, source control, CI/CD and test management from one supplier. Testers and QA leads work in Test Plans, while product owners and outside reviewers join as Stakeholders with limited access. Companies that must keep code inside their own network run Azure DevOps Server instead. Organizations on Microsoft Entra ID connect it so staff sign in with their work accounts and admins can export audit logs. A typical change starts on a sprint board. A developer picks up a work item, works on a branch from Visual Studio, IntelliJ, Eclipse or Xcode, and opens a pull request. The branch policy holds the merge until enough reviewers approve, and linked work items move to their next state when the pull request completes. Teams that talk in Microsoft Teams or Slack create work items from a channel conversation and see board updates there. Service hooks and the REST API pass the same events to other systems, so the board, the review and the release stay in one organization.