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Application Development with Azure DevOps

Executive Summary

In this 21-hour hands-on course, learn to deliver high-quality applications faster with Azure DevOps. Gain practical experience using Azure Boards, Repos, Pipelines, Test Plans, and Artifacts for work management, version control, CI/CD, and automated testing—across both Azure DevOps Services and Server. Ideal for teams seeking modern DevOps skills. Basic programming knowledge required.

Productive tech team collaborating

Course Details

Azure DevOps is Microsoft's team-focused software to help your entire organization plan smarter, collaborate better, and ship faster with a set of modern developer services. Azure DevOps is a one-stop solution to help you deliver value and built-in quality for any app written using any code on any platform. You can build and deploy both to the cloud and on-premises for desktop, web, mobile, and more. You'll learn about the features and how you can use them effectively together. However, Microsoft has made the service fully extensible and integrates with popular services and platforms, so you're never locked in. In this 3-day, hands-on course, you will learn how you can apply sound DevOps principles so you and your team can deliver value as fast as your customers need and expect. This course can be taught Azure DevOps Services or Azure DevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server). Azure DevOps Service is Microsoft's cloud-based solution, while Azure DevOps Server is an on-premises solution.

Objectives

  • How you, your team, or your company should provision Azure DevOps Services or Azure DevOps Server
  • How to on-board developers and stakeholders
  • How you can use Azure Boards to track and manage your team's work
  • How to use Azure Repos for distributed version control of your team's assets using Git
  • How to use Azure Pipelines to create build pipelines to package up your applications
  • How to use Azure Pipelines to publish your applications and other items to the cloud or on-premises
  • How to increase quality with Azure Test Plans
  • How to create, host, and share packages with your team and add artifacts to your pipelines with Azure Artifact

Duration

21 hours of intensive training with live instruction including comprehensive labs, code samples, and environment setup guidance to ensure minimal disruption to daily workflows.

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Course Outline

Introduction to DevOps and Azure DevOps

  • What is DevOps? Core principles and goals
  • Overview of Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server
  • End-to-end DevOps lifecycle with Microsoft tools
  • Azure DevOps architecture and extensibility

Provisioning and Environment Setup

  • Provisioning Azure DevOps Services vs. Azure DevOps Server
  • Creating organizations and projects
  • Permissions, security, and team structure
  • Integrating with GitHub and external tools

Azure Boards: Planning and Tracking Work

  • Creating and managing backlogs, epics, and user stories
  • Using Kanban and task boards effectively
  • Planning and managing sprints
  • Limiting WIP and establishing “Definition of Done”
  • Reporting with queries, charts, and dashboards

Azure Repos: Version Control with Git

  • Centralized vs. decentralized workflows
  • Creating, cloning, and branching repositories
  • Pull requests, merge policies, and code reviews
  • Using GitHub Repos and integrating with Azure Boards
  • Searching and navigating large codebases

Azure Pipelines: CI/CD and Automation

  • Setting up build pipelines using YAML
  • Automating tests, builds, and quality checks
  • Releasing applications with multi-stage pipelines
  • Working with agents, service connections, and approvals
  • Deploying to cloud and on-prem environments

Testing and Quality with Azure Test Plans

  • Manual testing and exploratory testing workflows
  • Creating test suites and test cases
  • Capturing feedback from UAT
  • Integrating testing into build/release pipelines
  • Tracking defects and test coverage

Artifact Management with Azure Artifacts

  • Publishing and sharing NuGet, npm, Maven, and Python packages
  • Integrating artifacts into build pipelines
  • Managing package versions and security
  • Using GitHub Packages as an alternative

Infrastructure and Configuration as Code

  • Creating Azure resources with ARM and Bicep
  • Using Azure CLI and PowerShell in pipelines
  • Managing infrastructure state with templates
  • Implementing Desired State Configuration (DSC)

Final Workflow and Best Practices

  • Full DevOps workflow from planning to release
  • Promoting DevOps culture across teams
  • Ensuring traceability across boards, repos, pipelines, and test plans
  • Using dashboards and analytics for continuous improvement

Prerequisite

  • Basic programming experience, preferably in C# with Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio 2022.
  • The focus of this class is using Azure DevOps Services, so all programming code is provided to the student.

Training Materials

All students receive comprehensive courseware covering all topics in the course. Courseware is distributed via GitHub in the form of documentation and extensive code samples. Students practice the topics covered through challenging hands-on lab exercises.

Students will need a free, personal GitHub account to access the courseware. Student will need permission to install the selected language platform (Node.js, .NET SDK, or Python) and Visual Studio Code on their computers. Also, students will need permission to install packages for the selected coding platform as well as Visual Studio Extensions.