(Practical) Tips for Getting the Most Out of Azure and Azure DevOps

Tags: devops, azuredevops
Published: 2020-05-22 07:40:18

Even with its massive directory of tools and seemingly limitless customization, Azure DevOps isn’t always used to its full potential. Could your team be getting more out of Azure? Probably.

These tips will help maximize the value your team gets from Azure.

<h3>Give Your DevOps Team Plenty of Time to Learn the Ropes</h3>
When it comes to deployment preparation, the DevOps team needs just as much time as the deployment team. Bringing your DevOps team in early gives them time to prepare, to plan, and to deploy several times before your solution goes live.

Over time, your DevOps team will learn and grow and become more efficient. But in the beginning, that extra time is crucial for getting the team oriented and set up.

<h3>Plan Ahead for Maximum Strategy</h3>
Having a strategy in mind all the way from the early stages of your project will save your team from a lot of headaches down the line. This means multiple layers of planning—you need strategies for artifact naming, monitoring/logging, security, scaling, backups/reliability, even change management. Plan them all to the furthest extent possible between all stakeholders, including you development, DevOps, and other teams.

<h3>Have a Protocol for Deployment</h3>
Your DevOps team should quickly establish a deployment cadence. In other words, they should be able to deploy anything to any environment at any time. Establishing a protocol or cadence for deployment lets the team practice the processes, which means everything will run smoother later down the line. As the team is building their protocol, they should encounter, address, and resolve and issues they have with the process.

<h3>Be Able to “Undeploy”</h3>
Getting the most out of Azure means being efficient. And part of that is not having anything in use in the cloud that you don’t need, because you’ll be charged for everything that’s there. That’s why it helps to have an “undeployment” process—for every deployment to every environment, you should also be able to “undeploy” and get rid of everything that’s there.

<h3>Only Let Your Core Team Into Azure DevOps</h3>
Is there anything worse than having a build or deployment fail, and then finding out it’s because somebody popped in and made a “tweak” without telling the DevOps team about it? With Azure DevOps’ security features, you don’t have to worry about that happening.

You can give access to your Azure DevOps site only to the core DevOps team that needs access. Anyone else on your team can access their own deployments through Azure DevOps security groups.

<h3>Learn Your Way Around the Azure DevOps API</h3>
Azure DevOps API is easy to access via simple tools, and it can kick off build and deployment processes or give you tons of information about the platform as a whole. It’s a powerful tool, and spending some time learning how to use it will result in all kinds of new ways your team can be even more productive.

<h3>There's probably an extension for that thing you hate</h3>
For example, if you hate there is no timesheet feature - there is an extension for that. Check out the[Azure DevOps Marketplace](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/). You'll probably be surprised at how many extensions there are. 

<b>Remember: Azure DevOps Is Always Changing</b>
Deploying to the cloud means trusting in a platform that is constantly changing and improving. Most of these changes make the cloud better, but you have to keep in mind that using Azure DevOps to its full potential means being flexible and always ready to learn about new tools, changes, and improvements your team can take advantage of.

The best way to do that?

Have a strong DevOps team that’s curious, motivated, and collaborative, so your team is always ready to handle new changes.