Team Development with Azure DevOps

Introduction to Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is the collaboration hub offered by Microsoft for everyone in the development team, including project managers, testers, architects, developers and end-users. It provides a comprehensive suite of tools for planning, developing, delivering, and maintaining software projects.

• Introduction to Azure DevOps
• Project Management with Azure Boards
• Version Control with Azure Repos
• Continuous Integration and Deployment with Azure Pipelines
• Package Management with Azure Artifacts
• LAB: Creating and configuring your project

Using Git

Source code is the most valuable asset of any software project. To manage it effectively, you need a robust system to track changes, collaborate across teams, and maintain a historical record of your work. Azure Repos provides full support for Git, the most popular version control system. In this section, we cover the essential Git workflows for managing your source history.

• Version Control concepts
• Distributed Source Control with Git
• Git Clients: Command Line, Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code
• Creating a local repository
• Configuring your Git repository
• Checking the status of your repo
• Staging files
• Committing files
• Comparing changes in files
• Reverting commits
• LAB: Working with a local repository

Team collaboration with remote repositories

Multiple developers working on the same code base requires a central place for all your team's code and changes. In Git these are known as remote repositories. Here we discuss team collaboration with Git.

• Team collaboration with remote repositories
• Cloning a remote repository
• Synchronizing with a remote repository
• Resolving Git Pull conflicts
• LAB: Working with remote repositories

Working in isolation with branches

How can we avoid code changes from one developer interfering with code from others? Branching has always been used to allow developers to complete their changes before integrating them with others.

• Adding branches to your workflow
• Branching Strategies - Using GitFlow
• Merge vs. Rebase - keeping a linear history
• Managing your branches
• LAB: Working with branches in git

Team Collaboration with Pull Requests

Working as a team on the same codebase comes with its own challenges. Factors like false cognates, code conventions, SOLID principles, etc., could result in good or bad code quality. Pull requests allow you to ensure that your code maintains its high quality.

• Protecting your branches with pull requests
• Ensuring high quality code with Pull Requests
• Different Merge Strategies, i.e. Squash Merge
• Versioning with Git Tags
• Using Forks
• LAB: Team collaboration with Pull Requests

Git Recipes

A collection of specialized techniques for optimizing your workflow, fixing common mistakes, and managing complex repository states.

• Git Worktrees for managing multiple checkouts
• Stashing changes for quick context switching
• Git Cherry-Pick to apply specific commits
• Interactive Rebase for cleaning commit history
• Git Reflog to recover lost commits or branches
• Git Hooks for workflow automation
• Custom Aliases for personalized commands
• Git Bisect for automated bug hunting
• Removing Secrets and sensitive data from history
• Global .gitignore for cleaner environments

Azure DevOps Team Projects

Azure DevOps is the collaboration hub for everyone in the development team, including project managers, testers, architects, developers and end-users. Here we will create a team project and configure it.

• Development Processes
• Team Projects and Process Templates
• Customizing your Project Management Process
• LAB: Creating and customizing your team project

Project Management with Azure Boards

The project backlog contains all the features that users have requested. This does not mean we will immediately add this feature; for this, we have backlog planning where we try to identify the features we want to build next.

• Iterative Development
• Creating the project backlog
• Work Items and Queries
• Velocity and Forecasting
• LAB: Create your project backlog

Planning and Running a Sprint

Once features are selected, the team must transition from high-level planning to execution. Azure Boards facilitates this full lifecycle by allowing teams to balance work against capacity, break stories into tasks, and track real-time progress. We will look at how to effectively plan the iteration and use charts to guide the team to completion.

• Sprint Planning and the Iteration Backlog
• Balancing work with Capacity Planning
• Decomposing User Stories into Tasks
• The Daily Standup and Team Dashboards
• Monitoring health with the Burndown Chart
• Integrating Work Items with Source Control
• LAB: Planning and Executing a Sprint

Continuous Integration with Azure Pipelines

Continuous Integration (CI) eliminates "integration hell" by automating the building and testing of code every time a change is merged. Azure Pipelines serves as the engine for this process, using automated workflows to validate software quality at every commit.

• Doing Continuous integration
• Introduction to YAML
• Authoring a build using YAML pipelines
• What are stages, jobs, tasks?
• What are build agents?
• Setting up a build agent in your enterprise network
• LAB: Setting up and running a build definition

Continuous Deployment with Azure Pipelines

With continuous deployment, you can automatically deploy your project. By utilizing stages, you can verify the quality of your deployment through manual and/or automatic steps before deploying to production.

• Release management and continuous deployment
• Release definitions
• Integrating with other systems (such as Azure and GitHub) using Service Connections
• Approving releases with release gates
• LAB: Continuous Deployment with a release definition

Deployment Patterns

Continuous Delivery is more than release management. Here we will discuss different deployment patterns and when to use them.

• Deployment is more than deploying to QA and PROD environments
• Explore Microservices Architecture
• Minimize Deployment Downtime using Blue/Green Deployment
• Using Canary Releases
• Optimize performance using A/B Testing
• Using Progressive Exposure (aka Ring-Based Deployment)
• Exposing New Features using Feature Toggles
• Choosing between deployment patterns
• LAB: Implementing a Canary Release with Traffic Manager

Configuration and Keeping Secrets Safe

Hardcoding sensitive information or environment-specific settings within source code creates security risks and deployment challenges. To build robust pipelines, teams must decouple configuration from code and securely manage credentials. Learn to externalize settings and secure secrets with Azure Key Vault and App Configuration.

• Application Configuration Options
• Using Azure Key Vault
• Centralize your settings using Azure App Configuration
• Feature Toggles with Azure App Configuration
• LAB: Using Azure Key Vault with CI/CD

Implement Secure Continuous Deployment

How do you ensure your applications are secure and stay secure with continuous integration and delivery? How can you find and fix security issues early in the process? It starts with practices commonly referred to as DevSecOps.

• Explore Continuous Security Validation
• Key Validation Points
• Scanning your Code Base for Security
• Avoid Packages with Vulnerabilities

Infrastructure as Code

The cloud enables you to easily provision computing infrastructure, such as servers, networks, storage, and other resources. With 'infrastructure as code,' you use machine-readable definition files, such as ARM or Bicep, to deploy your infrastructure.

• What is Infrastructure as Code?
• Authoring Bicep Templates
• Deploying Bicep using Azure CLI
• Using Desired State Configuration
• Using Continuous Deployment to create your infrastructure
• LAB: Deploying your application's infrastructure

Azure Artifacts

Modern development utilizes packages like NuGet, NPM, or others. With Azure Artifacts, you can create your own private or public package feeds.

• Understanding Azure Artifacts
• Creating a Package Feed
• Pushing a Package
• Understanding Upstream Sources
• Versioning Packages
• Using Artifacts in Azure Pipelines