BuildMaster

What do you like best?

The back-end tie-in to Otter Script and the other components, as well as the ease of modification of any of the open-sourced component plugins. The process orchestration is top-notch; allowing fine-grained control on approval and security as well as detailed point-in-time manual intervention and restoration (depending on how you've written your pipeline!). The pipelines are 'drag and drop' for the newbie, allowing loops and conditionals, but also can be switched to pure code which is really well documented.

What do you dislike?

The problem, the largest problem, is that the community isn't large enough to provide the scale of plugins that other solutions (I say that sparingly, as release automation is not the same as build automation) have. VSO, newest, has started implementing release automation and the backing behind it could cause a disruption unless the Inedo community pulls together.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

A DevOps culture is not all about the tools, it is about how the organization embraces the mindset. This was an essential early tool as it provided the Developers the means to ensure their builds were being deployed properly and as required, but gave the business the peace of mind that comes with controlling a production rollout with validations. But beyond that, it set a groundwork in place rapidly so that we could release in a better manner and move forward trying to push the community and concepts of a DevOps environment.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

Compliance in release. Building is the first step, storage is another, but ensuring compliance on release of SQL projects, code projects, and relatively any asset is a key component of PCI, HIPAA, and SOX compliant organizations.