TFS2012 vs Jetbrains TeamCity + YouTrack

Question

We used TFS2012 in the cloud, and we don’t like the fact that there is no reporting service, so we want to switch to the local TFS2012. At the same time, we begin to love Git, and we think that this may make more sense than version control of TFS.

This, of course, requires researchers and developers to “play in the admin,” so we take the time to evaluate whether Jetbrains' high-end solutions are appropriate.

Considering a team of 6-8 people who works with Scrum, who wants to be in “best practice” training for agile work, and a project that combines .NET technologies for internal and Javascript (AngularJS) on the -end front panel, given the transition from TFS2012 to TeamCity / YouTrack / Git stack for scrum planning, source control, continuous integration and quality control and problem tracking:

• What could we skip from TFS2012?
• What will we use in the new stack?
• Is the new stack short in any way that TFS is not and vice versa?

Note. This is a TFS2012 specific issue. In SO and elsewhere, there are several comparisons for previous versions of TFS and TeamCity, possibly YouTrack.

Answer 1

Here is a brief history of my two-week experience with Git / YouTrack versus 6 months of TFS.

The new stack looks much easier than TFS. Both installations (we soon tried to use TFS in place), and using TFS gives the impression of a very heavy corporate dialing for no reason. This is partly an illusion that the user interface design creates, but it seems like with YouTrack:

• Makes fewer clicks to do something and even less if you learn some shortcuts and how to use commands.
• It’s easier to move between views - there are fewer of them, but it’s better to get an overview than TFS. This is not because they provide more information - in most cases they provide less information, but because they provide key information in a visually clean way.
• The ability to run ad-hoc requests on YouTrack makes such a big difference! In TFS, you need to create a query with a user interface that tries to simplify it, but in the end it becomes more difficult for you than just entering the query parameters. I mean, we are still developers.
• I liked the local Git commits and how download requests work to integrate other people's work into the main branch or merge with TFS.
• TeamCity was also very user-friendly - although I have no experience with CI on TFS. Having said that, this is an area in which I did not delve into, because I already spent a lot of time managing TFS.

Hiccups and things that I missed from TFS:

• It’s a lot harder to manage releases with YouTrack or I don’t understand how to do this effectively. Managing and sharing product backlogs, release backlogs, and sprint backlogs are easier in TFS.
• It’s not possible to plan a sprint based on developer ability — I believe JetBrains is working on it.
• You have to pay for private Git, although YouTrack / TeamCity are free and fully featured for multiple users.

I will try to keep this relevant when I go.