Mapping GitHub and Azure DevOps Features

GitHub and Azure DevOps have an overlapping feature set, although GitHub is expected to supplant Azure DevOps in the long term. Both products provide features that enable so-called DevOps processes for software development.

The term “DevOps” refers to a strategy where developers, IT, business teams, and users work together in a cycle that frequently improves applications. The phases of a DevOps life cycle include the following:

• Plan, where teams define and discuss goals, tasks, and issues with development
• Build, where source code is built into consumable executables and packages
• Continuous Integration, where new code is frequently incorporated into the main code base to ensure it builds and does not break critical application functionality
• Deploy, where builds are deployed into production
• Operate, where production applications are run, maintained, and monitored
• Feedback, where user and operator feedback is obtained and stored for diagnosis, analysis, and planning.

The Feedback phase loops back into the Plan phase creating a continuous cycle.