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DevOps - Developer Support

Building a better DSC script

May 10, 2019 May 10, 2019 05/10/19
Developer Support
For those people that want to build a better DSC script, one that checks for most conditions and wants to keep their custom scripts from failing with no error handling, check out these recommendations.

Using Azure DevOps to Deploy Web Applications to Virtual Machines

April 23, 2019 Apr 23, 2019 04/23/19
Developer Support
While it’s worth mentioning that hosting web applications using Azure PaaS offerings or via containers would be the preferred route for a variety of reasons, VMs are still widely used in many organizations. With that scenario in mind, this post is geared to helping you get started with streamlining your release process. As a note, much of this process translates easily to using Azure PaaS offerings.

Tips on Starting DevOps Projects

April 20, 2019 Apr 20, 2019 04/20/19
Developer Support
DevOps uses Agile principles and combines infrastructure, development, QA, and operations engineers together through the entire cycle of software development, deployment, and support, eliminating many of the silos between teams. Most importantly, DevOps improves communication and enables better collaboration, helping enterprises to bring products and innovation to market much more rapidly.

Business-Driven Digital Transformation with Azure and Azure DevOps

April 13, 2019 Apr 13, 2019 04/13/19
Developer Support
Business-driven development (BDD) is a methodology in which business decisions and requirements drive an IT solution. Without adequate business needs identified, development cannot begin. Business-driven digital transformation is taking this a step further and having a company embrace a larger change, and therefore improve from it. The scale of digital transformation is of a larger magnitude, and it relies on buy-in of all business folks, as well as the IT department.

Consider This When Planning your TFS to Azure DevOps Migration

March 8, 2019 Mar 8, 2019 03/8/19
Developer Support
Depending on what version of TFS you intend to migrate and what features you are using, there are a few things that in my opinion are “major” considerations because they have the potential of adding scope to your migration efforts. While you will find out about them as you read through the official migration guide, I believe there is value to knowing these things prior to embarking in such journey. 

Accessibility Testing with Azure DevOps Pipelines

March 5, 2019 Mar 5, 2019 03/5/19
Developer Support
I was recently working with one of my customers to help them improve the usability of their applications as mandated by their IT staff. The goal was to create quality web applications that can be equally useful to all users including those with disabilities. Together, we reviewed many good tools and potential best practices, but we wanted something that would specifically run as part of the application release process.

Hosting Python packages in Azure DevOps

January 21, 2019 Jan 21, 2019 01/21/19
Developer Support
What I wanted to accomplish here was simply to create a redistributable Python package. Also show some of the practices on how to work with Python in a Windows environment, but I could not stop there. I went ahead and built a complete CI/CD pipeline for the package, showing how easy it is and how well Python projects integrate with Azure DevOps.