TFS vs. JIRA/Bamboo/SVN
this week I participated a presentation of the 2008 TFS. Currently we are using Jira and Svn (and maybe Bamboo). What solution to you prefer?
Answer
If you're just using TFS for source control and nothing else (which, btw, is overkill in the same way as chartering a jet to go pick up fast food), then you're better off with smaller solutions that just does source control (SVN, etc). TFS is an "Application Lifecycle Management" (ALM) tool, and incorporates a ton of additional functionality:
- Bug tracking
- Developer tasks
- External issue submission
- Automated builds
- Code reporting
- Project status update/time projections
- Many more
It's not really fair to compare it against tools that just do source control - TFS will appear cumbersome and expensive if you do. There are tools out there that can be used to do all these things, and they even integrate well together in most cases, but especially if your devs are all using Visual Studio (and there's always http://www.teamprise.com/ if some aren't) and you have some Sharepoint knowledge in-house, and ESPECIALLY if your devs have MSDN licenses (MSDN includes a CAL for TFS, so you only need to buy the server license), TFS can't be beat.