Developer Support

Advocacy and Innovation

What is your Agile?

In this post, Senior Application Manager, AJ Weaver talks about the many interpretations of Agile.First, let me start by saying that when I am talking about Scrum, I am not necessarily talking about Agile. All Scrum is Agile but not all Agile is Scrum. As you can see below, Scrum is just one cornerstone of Agile. The term is misused and abused...

Safe On-Premises Releases Using VSTS

Read on to learn how Premier Developer Consultant Ilias Jennane addresses the idea of safe releases and incremental feature rollout for on-premises releases using Visual Studio Team Services.I have recently interacted with many customers that were clearly under the impression that they should only consider DevOps practices if they are doing ...

Create Your First CI Pipeline in 10 Minutes or Less

In this post, Premier Developer Consultant Derrick Cawthon shares how to quickly create a continuous integration pipeline in VSTS, so teams can start pursuing their DevOps journeys.During your DevOps journey typically the first item you will want to do (after establishing a good process for the team) is setup a Continuous Integration (CI) ...

Continuous Delivery – Is it right for you?

This post is provided by App Dev Manager John Tran who explores the question: Is continuous delivery right for you?(image) Coming from the operations world, I can't count the number of times someone has come to me asking for a production deployment on a Friday afternoon. This would always give me chills, thinking of all the late nights that I'...

Automating Releases to Separate Azure Resource Groups using both TFS and VSTS

This post is written collaboratively by Premier Developer Consultants Ilias Jennane and Daisy Chaussee along with App Dev Manager Wyn Lewis-Bevan. Read on to learn how to build a solution in TFS, release it in VSTS, and automate the deployments to separate Azure Resource Groups. Business Case: One of our customers recently challenged us ...

Assigning Work Items to a Group in Visual Studio Team Services

In this post, Sr. Application Development Managers Mark Meadows and Everett Yang demonstrate how to extend VSTS Project Templates to allow Group assignments to Work Items.ISSUERecently a customer asked about whether they can assign work items to a group of users, instead of a single user. By default, Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) allows a...

Utilizing VSTS for Wholistic Organization Management – Should It Be Done?

In this post, App Dev Manager Kristofer Olin explores limits and intentions of a tool like VSTS to go beyond traditional ALM scenarios. (image) You've probably heard stories of people who utilize Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) for non-Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) related purposes.  For instance, I know someone that uses ...

Three questions that could improve your Agile team

This post is contributed by App Dev Manager Justin Scott who asks three very important Agile questions.Agile has been adopted by many successful companies who value quality, incremental change on a more frequent basis compared to a team that uses a waterfall development methodology. Teams that embark on the journey of introducing Agile often ...

Using VSTS API with PowerShell to scaffold Team Projects

In this post, Senior Application Development Managers Art Garcia demonstrates how to navigate the VSTS REST APIs. Visual Studio Team Services or VSTS has matured into one of the leading Application Lifecycle management tools available. It allows you to not only manage your work and team velocity, but it also is a great tool to use in ...