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Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook
Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook

Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook: Proven recipes to accelerate your DevOps journey with Azure DevOps Server 2019 (formerly TFS) , Second Edition

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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Arora Profile Icon Tarun Arora Profile Icon Shigihalli
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Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2.6 (5 Ratings)
eBook May 2019 456 pages 2nd Edition
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Azure DevOps Server 2019 Cookbook

Planning and Tracking Work

The best software teams ship early and often. In order to successfully plan and track a software project, it is important to understand the types of work involved in software delivery. All work that's undertaken for software delivery can be categorized into one of the following four categories:

Technical debt is a metaphor for the eventual consequences of poor software or infrastructure within your organization. It is considered debt because it is work that needs to be done before a particular project can be considered complete. If you don't pay down technical debt, then your unplanned work will continue to increase. Left unchecked, technical debt will ensure that the only work that gets done is unplanned work. 

Azure DevOps Server allows you to plan and track work using work items. Work items can be used to classify work into different categories. Work items allow you to decompose high-level ideas into smaller, workable units. These can then be prioritized, planned, and scheduled into iterations. Every team has a unique process for shipping software. Regardless of whether you follow Agile or Waterfall, Azure DevOps Server offers a range of out-of-the-box process workflows, along with giving you the option to create your own custom process workflows.

Over the last decade, agile software methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban have mostly displaced traditional Waterfall-driven software delivery for complex systems with evolving system requirements. Agile methodologies feature self-organizing teams that are empowered to achieve specific business objectives. Agile methodologies focus on the rapid and frequent delivery of partial solutions (also known as minimum viable products) that can be evaluated and used to determine the next steps for the business. In this way, solutions are built in an iterative and incremental manner. Agile methodologies have been shown to deliver higher-quality products in less time, resulting in improved customer satisfaction. The annual Agile survey report available here http://bit.ly/agileReport (refer to page 8) shows why organizations are adopting Agile software development over traditional methodologies.

While most organizations are very diligent when tracking planned work, unplanned work doesn't always get tracked. Work is work – whether it's planned or unplanned, it needs to be tracked. Hidden work robs you of focus. The primary goal of any DevOps setup within an organization is to improve the delivery of value for customers and the business; things that aren't tracked aren't measured. In the famous words of Peter Drucker,  "you can't manage what you can't measure."

We've all been on a project where no data of any kind was tracked, and it was hard to tell whether we were on track for release or getting more efficient as we went along. On the other hand, many of us have had the misfortune of being on projects where stats were used as a weapon, pitting one team against another to justify mandatory weekend work. So, it's no surprise that most teams have a love/hate relationship with metrics. There are as many ways to measure a project as there are to build it. If you only measure one key metric, it is easy to get tunnel vision. Whether the teams are focusing on just making the metric better (often through gaming the system) or management is using the measure to drive all decisions, you can end up with a product or organization that looks good but is really driving off a cliff. To foster a culture of continuous improvement, Agile teams tend to focus on the following metrics:

  • Lead time
  • Cycle time 
  • Cumulative flow
  • Velocity 
  • Product burn-down and product burn-up

We'll cover some of these metrics and how they can be tracked using Azure DevOps in detail later on in this chapter. Read on to learn how work items allow you to plan and track work in your software projects. 

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes: 

  • Creating a team project for an Agile team 
  • Importing requirements from Excel
  • Getting social with work items
  • Portfolio backlog hierarchies and decomposing work 
  • Configuring and customizing backlog boards
  • Preparing and planning a sprint 
  • Visualizing progress in a sprint 
  • Delivery plans to track multiple teams 
  • Dashboards for planning and tracking work

Creating a team project for an Agile team

Azure DevOps Server provides a set of integrated tools that allow teams to effectively manage the life cycle of their software project. The team in Azure DevOps Server is encapsulated within the container of a team project. A team project is a logical container that's used to isolate all tools and artifacts associated with a software application in a single namespace.  

The conceptual boundary that was introduced through the team project eliminates the problem of having access to unrelated artifacts such as code, work items, or release information that isn't relevant to your application's development. Related team projects can be grouped together into a team project collection. Team project collections can be used to introduce a physical separation between a group of related team projects by hosting them in separate databases.

An instance of Azure DevOps Server is capable of supporting multiple team project collections, and each team project collection can internally host multiple team projects. A team project can house multiple teams. As illustrated in the following diagram, the process template is scoped at the team project level. Multiple team projects in a team project collection can use different process templates; however, multiple teams within a single team project will need to use the same process. Teams, however, have autonomy on the level of the backlogs they choose and the workflows on the Kanban board. The delivery framework of choice is applied through the Process Template, which, in turn, applies the delivery framework-specific terminology, artifacts, and workflows to the team project and all teams within the team project:

The process template defines the set of work item types, queries, and reports that can be used to plan and track the project. In this recipe, we'll learn how to create a new Team Project using the Scrum template.

TFS 2018 and later versions no longer support native integration with SharePoint products. If you're planning to upgrade to Azure DevOps Server 2019, read About SharePoint integration (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/report/sharepoint-dashboards/about-sharepoint-integration?view=azure-devops) to learn about the options available to you.

Getting ready

How to do it...

To create  a new team project from the web, follow these steps:

  1. Launch a browser and navigate to the Azure DevOps Server Portal.
  2. From the top right side, click the +Create project button:

  1. Provide a name for your new team project, select its initial source control type, and select a process to create a team project. The work item process is a one time choice and cannot be changed once set. See Choosing the right version control for your project (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/tfvc/comparison-git-tfvc?view=azure-devops) and Choose a process (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/work-items/guidance/choose-process?view=azure-devops) for guidance:

The ability to work from both Git and TFVC repositories from the same team project has been supported since TFS 2015 Update 1. See Git team projects (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/team-projects?view=azure-devops) or TFVC team projects (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/team-projects?view=azure-devops) for more information.

How it works... 

The following items are created for you as part of the team project creation process:

  • Dashboards: A canvas to bring key information radiators to raise visibility within and outside the team
  • Code: A code repository (Git/TFVC) based on your selection is provisioned
  • Work: All agile planning and tracking tools are nested under this hub. 
    • Team: A default team with the same name as the team project is provisioned.
    • Area Path: A default Area Path with the same name as the name of the Team is provisioned. The teams' backlog is configured to show work items assigned to this Area Path.
    • Iteration Path: The set of iterations is pre-created for the team.
    • Team Portal: The Team Portal allows the Team members to connect to TFS to manage source code and work items, and build and test efforts.
  • Build & Release: Automated pipelines to build and release your application
  • Test: Plan, track, and execute tests
  • Wiki: To share knowledge and documentation with the team

These are shown in the following screenshot:

Azure DevOps server simplifies navigation across the portal, and for those who prefer the keyboard to the mouse, there is a great support for navigation through the keyboard in both global and local hubs. Hold Shift + ? in the portal to see the full list of supported keyboard shortcuts.

There's more...

Azure DevOps Server makes the process of setting up a new team project very straightforward—so much so that you may be inclined to create a new team project for every software project. I would generally not recommend this; with support for multiple teams and backlog isolation at the team level, it is possible to have a logical separation, along with the ability to share within a team project. In principle, you should consider a team project for each product, and a team for each work stream. The only time you should consider splitting a product team out into a separate team project is if it needs to follow a unique process, since process templates are scoped at the team project rather than at the team level. 

If you find yourself organically needing to grow out into a new team project to use a different process template, you can consider leveraging the VSTS Migration Toolkit (https://nkdagility.com/vsts-sync-migration-tools/) to carry out a full fidelity migration. 

Importing requirements from Excel

In Scrum, the taskboard is a visual display of the progress of the Scrum team during a sprint. It presents a snapshot of the current sprint backlog, allowing everyone to stay synchronized and focused on the work to be done. Most of the time, smaller teams are distributed across multiple locations, and in these situations, tracking work with a digital tool helps distributed teams synchronize more effectively. Some of us are lucky enough to land on green field projects, which gives us the opportunity to start tracking the requirements of work items from inception. Other times, projects are planned in tools that don't natively support integration with Azure DevOps Server. Luckily, most planning tools allow you to extract the data to Excel. Azure DevOps Server natively supports importing work items through Excel, but the challenge is mostly working out which fields in the spreadsheet should map out to work items in Azure DevOps Server. In this recipe, we'll learn how to import requirements from Excel into work items and refresh updates from work items back into Excel. 

Getting ready

If you don't have Office Excel, install it. For Azure DevOps Server 2019, you'll need Office 2013 or a later version. The Excel plugin for Azure DevOps Server is installed by installing one of the latest editions of Visual Studio or the Azure DevOps Server Standalone Office Integration installer. Azure DevOps Server Standalone Office Integration supports connecting to Azure DevOps Server from Excel, Microsoft Project, and the PowerPoint-based storyboard tool.

If you don't intend to install Visual Studio but need Office integration, download and install Azure DevOps Server Standalone Office Integration (free) from https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/. Once the installation is complete, the Excel Plugin will show up under the Team ribbon in Excel, as shown in the following screenshot:

If you don't see the Team ribbon, perform the following steps to enable it:

  1. Click the File tab in Excel and choose Options.
  2.  In the Categories pane, click Add-ins, and verify that Team Foundation Add-in shows up in the Disabled Application Add-ins section.
  3. In the manage box, select disabled items and click Go.
  4. Select the Azure DevOps Server Add-in and click Enable. Finally, exit the dialog by clicking Close.
If you are continuing to run into issues with Add-in not showing up in Excel, you may be able to resolve the issue with the procedures provided at the following link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/backlogs/office/tfs-office-integration-issues.

How to do it...

Now that we have the Azure DevOps Sever excel plugin installed, in this section we'll learn how to use it. 

Start by performing the following steps:

  1. Launch Excel and start with a blank sheet. Navigate to the Team ribbon.   
  2. Click on New List to connect to your project in TFS. 
  1. If you are connecting to Azure DevOps Server from Excel for the first time, you will have to add your server details to the list of recognized servers. The steps for this are shown in the following screenshot:

  1. Select the PartsUnlimited team project and click Connect:

  1. When asked which type of work item list you want to create, choose Input list. An Input list gives you a blank template that is linked to your team project:

  1. Your worksheet will now be bound to your team project as a flat list. What this means is that you can add work items to the team project from the worksheet or add work items to the worksheet from the team project. Fill out the details of the work items you want to add and their work item type. The Excel plugin defaults the list type to flat, but you can change it to a tree list if you wish. A tree list allows you to create and view hierarchically linked work items, like so:

  1. Publish the changes by clicking the Publish button from the Team ribbon.
You can add more work item fields as columns to this template. Right-click within the table mapped to Azure DevOps Server, and then from the context menu, select Team | Choose columns

How it works...

To validate whether the changes have been synchronized to Azure DevOps Server, launch the web portal in a browser, and navigate to the work hub in the PartsUnlimited team project. The newly added work item should show up under the features backlog, as shown in the following screenshot:

Follow these tips to keep your work in sync:

  • When you first open a saved worksheet, use the Refresh button in Excel on the Team ribbon to download the latest data from the data store
  • Enter data for additional fields by adding columns to the worksheet using the Choose Column icon in Excel on the Team ribbon
  • To avoid data conflicts, publish your additions and modifications often
  • To prevent loss of data before you publish or refresh, save your workbook periodically

The Azure DevOps Server Excel plugin uses the Azure DevOps Server REST APIs, which are wrapped into an SDK. This allows for safe and secure bulk editing of work items. The plugin supports two-way updates, and changes that are made to work items in Azure DevOps Server web portal can be refreshed back into Excel by clicking the Refresh button. Refreshing the data does not overwrite any calculations or formatting that you may have applied to the worksheet. If you spend a lot of time using Microsoft Project, you'll be excited to know that the Azure DevOps Server plugin can also be used from Microsoft Project.

There's more... 

The marketplace features the Azure DevOps Open in Excel extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=blueprint.vsts-open-work-items-in-excel). This is a free extension that was created by Microsoft DevLabs, and adds the option of opening work items in Excel from various access points, such as work item queries, backlogs, and selective work items:

Another noticeable extension in the marketplace is the Requirements Integrator (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jgarverick.RequirementsIntegrator). This is an open source extension that was created by Microsoft MVP Josh Garverick, which introduces the capability of mapping external requirements into Azure DevOps Server to create a traceability matrix with work items. This extension introduces a new sub-tab called Requirements in the work hub, which allows you to import external requirements into TFS using a predefined Excel template:

The extension allows you to do the following:

  • Manage requirements to work item mapping
  • Display a sprint view that shows the requirements covered by a sprint
  • Display a traceability matrix, including gaps, for requirements that are imported and mapped to WIs
  • Restrict import usage to non-CMMI process templates
  • Requirement visualization (visual traceability)
  • Export requirement information to Excel 

I encourage you to look at the marketplace (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/) as it has a range of extensions that enhance the experience of planning, tracking, and managing work items. While this extension isn't necessarily a replacement for the Excel add-in, you'll find that it enhances the work planning, tracking, and management experience.

Getting social with work items

To provide a fresher, more modern experience in tracking work, the old and clunky work item form has been given a makeover. Along with the noticeable responsive form layout, the new form introduces a lot of new features. In this recipe, we'll see how to put the newly added work item discussion control to work. The following screenshot shows the new work item form:

It's fair to say that projects are tracked using work items, while discussions are tracked using email. Often, decisions aren't reflected back into work items, which results in work needing to be done later. The new work item form makes it really easy to stay on track by letting you have conversations within a work item. The discussions control provides a rich editor, giving you the ability to associate images, mention people, and link work items. The power of work item search and the social features of alerts and notification follow work items, and my work items make it really easy to stay involved and informed. 

Getting ready

Before we dig into work item discussions, let's see how easy it is to populate your team project with sample data. The sample data widget, which can be found at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-devlabs.SampleDataWidget, is a free extension that was developed by Microsoft DevLabs, and it makes it really easy to generate demo work items in bulk. This extension also provides an option to generate and set up work item data inline with the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), giving you a great jump-start into implementing SAFe with TFS.

Once you've installed the extension, navigate to the dashboard in the PartsUnlimited project web portal. Add the sample data widget to the dashboard, select Getting started in the dropdown, and click Create. Once this awesome extension has completed its magic, you'll see your team project become populated with new features, user stories, and active iterations—all ready for you to start playing with everything they offer.

How to do it...

Let's perform the following steps:

  1. Launch the PartsUnlimited web portal and select the Search work items control:

  1. In the work item search box, type add. The keyword add is searched across all work items in the team project.  The search results are summarized in the left-hand side panel. The search results are ordered by relevance, and can be reordered using a different field:

  1. The work item search understands the work item schema, which allows it to support complex work item search queries. For example, by changing the search query to add and s:active and t:feature, we can filter the results down to the work item type feature and set the work item status to Active:

  1. To search for work items that need review, change the search query to a new tag: needs review. The new follow functionality allows you to subscribe to work items and be notified when changes are made to them. Click on the Follow button to follow one or more work items:

  1. Double-click the first work item in the search result and navigate to the Discussion section in the work item form. Here, you can add a comment, use # to link a work item, or use @ to mention a person:

  1. Click Save to persist the changes. The linked work item is automatically linked to the work item as a related work item. This mention triggers a notification workflow, and an email is sent out to the mentioned individual, in addition to others who are following this work item. You can click Maximize Discussion to enter an expanded discussion view:

  1. My favorite feature is being able to paste images into the work item form without having to save them and attach them manually. In your discussions, you can use rich formatting, links, images, and more:

How it works...

 It is super easy for you to access artifacts that are most important for you. The redesigned account page has a personalized experience that shows the Projects, Favorites, Work, and Pull Requests you care about. You can go to one place and quickly find everything you need to do and care about. 

Start your day with the My work items page to be able to easily access all the work items that have been assigned to you across all projects. It also lets you check and access the status of all the work items that you are following, those you have been mentioned in, or those that you have recently viewed:

Work item search allows you to search across all projects. You can scope the search and drill down into an area path of choice. You can easily search across all work item fields, including custom fields, which enables more natural searches. The snippet view indicates where matches were found. Quick inline search filters let you refine work items in seconds. The dropdown list of suggestions helps you complete your search faster. For example, a search such as AssignedTo: Tarun WorkItemType: Bug State: Active finds all active bugs assigned to a user named Tarun. 

One of the design principles of the work item search team has been to keep the search actionable. The work item search interface integrates with familiar controls in the Work hub, giving you the ability to view, edit, comment, share, and much more, right from the search results. 

Notifications help you and your teams stay informed about activity in your team projects. TFS 2018 introduced a new experience that makes it easier to manage what notifications you and your teams receive. Users have their own account-level experience for managing notification settings (available via the Profile menu).

This view lets you manage personal subscriptions and also view subscriptions that have been created by team administrators for all the projects in your account:

You can set up new notifications by clicking on the New subscription link. This new notification experience gives you access to WIQL so that you can create filter criteria for specific conditions. In addition to this, you can set up notifications to be delivered to other email addresses and soap endpoints:

You, as an individual, also have the option of unsubscribing and opting out of a team or OOB notification subscription. Whether you are an administrator or not, toggling a shared team subscription from your notification settings only impacts you and not other team members.

You must configure an SMTP sever in order for team members to see the Notifications option from their account menu and to receive notifications. This can be done by following the steps provided at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/vsts/tfs-server/admin/setup-customize-alerts

There's more...  

The TFS marketplace features the Activity Feed extension, available at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=davesmits.VSTSActivityFeed. This free extension, created by Dave Smits, brings in the capability of viewing what's happening in your team project at a glance in one place. The extension is available as a dashboard widget, as well as a subpage in the work hub. Activity Feed gives a summary of all recent changes in work items, commits, pull requests, and builds. It tells who changed a task, who logged a bug, and who committed code. The extension supports configuration, so you can decide to filter out what's not relevant or simply configure which backlogs the work updates should be published from:

The team rooms functionality has been completely removed in TFS 2018 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2017/01/04/deprecation-of-the-team-rooms-in-team-services-and-tfs/. However, the introduction of social experiences built around you, including the search, follow, and comment features in work items and the activity feed extension, provides a far more engaging solution. 

Portfolio backlog hierarchies and decomposing work

Requirements come in all shapes and sizes! While many teams can work with a flat list of items, sometimes, it helps to group related items into a hierarchical structure. Perhaps you would like to start with a big picture and break it down into smaller deliverables. Or, perhaps you've got an existing backlog and now need to organize it. No matter your starting point, TFS offers you hierarchical backlogs so that you can bring more order to your backlog. Two backlog levels are enabled in each team project by default—in the Agile process template, it's features and stories. An additional backlog level—Epic—can be enabled optionally. The user story backlog level is used for sprint planning; the feature backlog level and the epic backlog level, also known as the Portfolio backlog, can have multiple uses. This is shown in the following diagram for ease of understanding:

Use your backlogs in conjunction with portfolio backlogs to plan your project and do the following:

  • Manage a portfolio of features that are supported by different development and management teams
  • Group items into a release train
  • Minimize size variability of your deliverables by breaking down a large feature into smaller backlog items

With portfolio backlogs, you can quickly add and group items into a hierarchy, drill up or down within the hierarchy, reorder and reparent items, and filter hierarchical views. 

Getting ready

TFS 2018 allows you to add one-level child links to work items with ease. However, when you are in a planning discussion, you sometimes want to rapidly create sub items at different levels of work item hierarchies. The TFS marketplace features the decompose extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cschleiden.decompose), a free extension that was created by Christopher Schleiden, which allows you to quickly break down work items into sub-hierarchies. Appropriately named, this extension makes decomposing work items into sub-items very easy, and very useful during team discussion and planning sessions. Once you've installed this extension, you'll see the Decompose work item option in the work item context menu and the backlog and boards work item context menu: 

 

How to do it...

Let's perform the following steps:

  1. Launch the PartsUnlimited team portal and navigate to the work hub. 
  2. To configure the team settings, click the gear icon under the velocity chart in the backlog view. The team settings window has several options to configure and style backlogs and boards, which we'll cover in later recipes:

  1. In the Settings window, under the General section, click Backlogs. This presents the backlog levels that are available to your team. This setting is configurable per team. Adding or removing a backlog level will only affect the team for which it's being done to, and not every team in a team project. To add the Epics backlog level for the PartsUnlimited team, simply check the Epics backlog level and click Save:

  1. Open an epic from the Epics backlog and choose Decompose from the context menu. Hit Enter to add a feature and indent to create the user story; indent again to create the task. Once you have decomposed the work item, click Create to save your changes:  

How it works...

The newly created work items are linked to each other. You can see this linking by expanding the linked work items in the Epics backlog:

With the growth in work item usage, there will be growth in the work item dependency tree. I usually find a list of dependencies meaningful until the depth of 3, after which I hope I could just visualize the dependency through a graph. Luckily, the TFS marketplace features the Work Item Visualization extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-devlabs.WorkItemVisualization), which is a free extension that was developed by Microsoft DevLabs. It allows you to visualize work item dependencies from within the work item form. The unique selling point of this extension is that it allows you to see how work items relate to each other, as well as code, tests, test results, builds, and external artifacts. You can even drill into your commits to explore the changeset details. Among other things, the extension also allows you to annotate and export visualizations, an example of which is provided by the following screenshot:

There's more...

Story mapping is a popular way of visualizing the product backlog with Agile teams. Story mapping is a top-down approach of requirement gathering. Story mapping starts from an overarching vision. A vision is achieved via goals. Goals are reached by completing activities. To complete an activity, users needs to perform tasks. And these tasks can be transformed into user stories for software development. Story maps are traditionally created using sticky notes on walls or whiteboards, and have proven to be popular among Agile development teams. However, these traditional storyboards are not without their disadvantages: walls are not transportable and the physical nature of these maps means they are only temporary.

The TFS marketplace features the SpecMap extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=techtalk.specmap), which was created by TechTalk software, and gives you the ability to create digital storyboards. This extension allows you to use existing work items in the system, which means that SpecMap goes further than just depicting story maps: creating a story map in SpecMap helps you plan iterations in TFS and structure your backlog items in the process. The following screenshot depicts a story map of the PartsUnlimited iOS feature team, who are identifying the user journey for the new iOS application that they are creating for both free and paid users:

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Key benefits

  • Improve code quality using pull requests, branch policies, Git hooks and Git branching design
  • Accelerate deployment of high-quality software by automating build and releases using CI/CD pipelines
  • Explore tried and tested techniques to automate database deployments, App Service and Function deployments in Azure

Description

Previously known as Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure DevOps Server is a comprehensive on-premise DevOps toolset with a rich ecosystem of open source plugins. This book will help you learn how to effectively use the different Azure DevOps services. You will start by building high-quality scalable software targeting .NET, .NET Core and Node.js applications. Next, you will learn techniques that will help you to set up end-to-end traceability of your code changes, from design through to release. Whether you are deploying software on-premise or in the cloud in App Service, Functions, or Azure VMs, this book will help you learn release management techniques to reduce failures. As you progress, you will be able to secure application configuration by using Azure Key Vault. You will also understand how to create and release extensions to the Azure DevOps marketplace and reach the million-strong developer ecosystem for feedback. Later, the working extension samples will even allow you to iterate changes in your extensions easily and release updates to the marketplace quickly. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to break down the invisible silos between your software development teams, and transform them into a modern cross-functional software development team.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone looking to succeed in DevOps. The techniques featured in this book particularly apply to all roles of the software development lifecycle including developers, testers, architects, configuration analysts, site reliability engineers and release managers. The book will also be useful if you are a new user who wants to learn how to get started with Azure DevOps Server 2019 or an experienced user who wants to understand how to launch a project into a modern and mature DevOps-enabled software development team.

What you will learn

  • Set up a team project for an Agile delivery team, importing requirements from Excel
  • Plan, track, and monitor progress using self-updating boards, Sprint, and Kanban boards
  • Unlock the features of Git by using branch policies, Git pull requests, forks, and Git hooks
  • Build and release .NET Core, SQL and Node.js applications using Azure Pipelines
  • Automate testing by integrating Microsoft and open source testing frameworks
  • Extend Azure DevOps Server to a million developer ecosystem

Product Details

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Publication date : May 03, 2019
Length: 456 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788830140
Vendor :
Microsoft
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Product Details

Publication date : May 03, 2019
Length: 456 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788830140
Vendor :
Microsoft
Concepts :
Tools :

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Frequently bought together


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Total 108.97
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Table of Contents

9 Chapters
Planning and Tracking Work Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Source Control Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Build and Release Agents Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Continuous Integration and Build Automation Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Continuous Testing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Continuous Deployments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Azure Artifacts and Dependency Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Azure DevOps Extensions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2.6
(5 Ratings)
5 star 40%
4 star 0%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 60%
seastar Jun 08, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
In addition to explaining the Azure DevOps Server 2019 features and capabilities, book covers great deal of topics ranging from code branching strategy to release practices to CI CD pipeline. Love the way every topic is organized in four sections, i.e. Getting ready…., How to do it…., How it works…, There’s more…Samples, examples and screenshots of UIs for every topic makes life easy and takes out any guesswork while configuring/implementing a feature. Doesn’t feel like you are reading a book, it’s more like someone sitting with you and guiding you step by step.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Marcin Policht Jul 26, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Despite the rapid pace in which companies embrace cloud-based solutions, there are numerous scenarios where on-premises technologies remain a viable or even necessary part of IT landscape. Those who are not yet ready to transition to Azure DevOps might want to consider running its on-premises counterpart named Azure DevOps Server (a successor to VSTS and TFS). If you happen to be facing such consideration and you are a software developer, architect, configuration analyst, release manager, or a member of an operational team, then this book is for you.DevOps became one of the most popular technology buzzwords in recent years, however, it is frequently misunderstood and mischaracterized. Azure DevOps Server 2019 cookbook does an excellent job of clarifying any misconceptions, providing a comprehensive coverage of concepts and implementation details of Microsoft Azure DevOps Server 2019.With its guidance, you will be able to step through initiating a team project and setting up traditional collaboration and tracking controls, integration with source control management (the book focuses on Git and TFVC, including such scenarios as importing Git from GitHub, the use of Azure DevOps-based Git repos, Git operations from Visual Studio Code, and Git Hooks), setting up build and release agents, as well as defining and configuring CI/CD pipelines (including continuous testing and feature flags, integration with third party tools like SonarQube and with Azure services, such as Azure Key Vault, Azure App Service, Azure SQL Database, and Azure DevTest Labs). You will also find here examples of using artifacts to build microservices-based apps, as well as managing NuGet and npm packages (including leveraging WhiteSource for artifact vulnerability scanning). Those more interested in development topics could learn about extending Azure DevOps Server capabilities by employing Azure DevOps Server APIs.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Amazon Customer Oct 21, 2019
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
lacking real actions, no more detail in how to do it, where to do it, who to do it.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Amazon Customer Jul 07, 2020
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
The sample of the Kindle version of this book has broken DRM. It will allow you to order the sample and deliver it, but not allow you to read it. At least that what happened to me. It was free so not a huge deal, but I would discourage anyone from ordering the full book unless this issue is addressed.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Jo Jan 19, 2020
Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 1
Azure devops is a big topic, there is to much features on the portal that can be confusing even to a team lead like me and this book does not have enough explanation and sample images on how it arrive to that UI. You, hove to google it first how to navigate to that UI screen. Waste of time.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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