Azure DevOps

Three strengths

• Everything in one place. Planning, code storage, automated builds, testing and package sharing sit in a single platform. 1
• Deploys to any cloud. Its pipelines can release to Azure, AWS, Google Cloud or a company's own servers. 1
• Works with the code you have. It supports Git and a wide range of languages, including .NET, Java, Node.js and Python. 1

What it is

Delivering software involves more than writing it. Someone has to decide what to build next, keep track of the changes, check that new work didn't break old work, and release it. Microsoft's Azure DevOps is a cloud platform that puts those jobs together: it "includes everything you need to plan work, collaborate on code, build applications, test functionality, and deploy to production". 1

It's made of five services. Azure Boards plans and tracks work on task boards. Azure Repos stores the code, with a full history of changes. Azure Pipelines builds, tests and releases the software automatically. Azure Test Plans organises testing, and Azure Artifacts shares reusable packages of code. 1

Pipelines puts a well-known practice into effect, called continuous integration. Software author Martin Fowler defines it as a practice where each team member merges their changes into the shared code at least daily, and each merge is verified by an automated build and tests. 2 It matters because small, frequent checks catch problems while they're still small. 2 Pipelines can then continue to continuous delivery, releasing the checked software to staging and production environments with approval steps in between. 1

It's in regular use across the industry too: 16.6% of developers surveyed in 2025 said they use it. 3

We work with it for a practical reason: some clients already run their delivery in Azure DevOps, and the tool works with any language or cloud, so we can fit into their setup.

How we use it

We use Azure DevOps when a client already runs on it, and we work inside their setup. One example is a transport client's data-warehousing project, where we built our work around their Azure DevOps environment. We don't run much of our own; the code for our own projects lives on GitHub.

That's Solution Architecture at work, where the goal is technology alignment: we fit the tools and processes you already have, instead of asking you to change them. It also supports our Data Solutions work when a client's data project is tracked and released through it. It pairs naturally with Azure.

References

1. Microsoft, "What is Azure DevOps?", Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/user-guide/what-is-azure-devops (accessed 28 October 2026)
2. Martin Fowler, "Continuous Integration", martinfowler.com, 2006 (revised 18 January 2024). https://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html (accessed 28 October 2026)
3. Stack Overflow, "2025 Developer Survey: Technology", survey.stackoverflow.co, 2025. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology (accessed 28 October 2026)