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DevOps: Uniting People, Processes, and Tech for Continuous Value Delivery

Uniting people, processes, and technology to accelerate continuous value delivery through collaboration, automation, and rapid feedback loops.

DevOps is a philosophy that unites people, processes, and technology to deliver continuous value, fostering collaboration, automation, and shared accountability.

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Overview

DevOps is not a methodology, framework, or job title—it is an philosophy or ethos that unites people, processes, and technology to enable continuous value delivery. At its core, DevOps is about eliminating friction between development and operations, fostering collaboration, and embracing automation to achieve high-quality, fast, and reliable software delivery.

The Philosophical Foundation

DevOps is built on principles that extend beyond tooling or process enforcement:

DevOps in Action

A DevOps-driven organisation doesn’t ask, “How do we implement DevOps?” Instead, it asks, “How do we deliver value faster and more reliably?” The answer typically involves:

DevOps is not a destination—it’s a continuous journey toward delivering better software, faster, with confidence.

Learn More about DevOps

Videos

DevOps: The Practical Path to Modernising Legacy Systems Without Starting Over

Unlock legacy system agility—discover how DevOps transforms slow, brittle tech into fast, scalable, and change-ready platforms without starting from scratch.
Blog

How to Build for Business Resilience and Continuity

Learn key strategies for building business resilience and continuity, including observability, system decoupling, routine deployments, team empowerment, and rapid recovery.
Videos

Why “Done” Only Counts When It’s Live: Moving Beyond Fake Finishes to Real Value in Software Delivery

Discover why “done” means live in production—not just code complete. Learn to deliver real value, close feedback loops, and drive outcomes that matter.
Signals

Do More Staging Environments Really Reduce Deployment Risk

Adding more staging environments does not reduce deployment risk; true safety comes from automated testing, continuous integration, and quality engineering practices.
Signals

Velocity isn’t how many story points a team burns down

Velocity measures how quickly teams turn ideas into value, using build, test, deploy, and feedback times—not just story points—to track real delivery speed.
Blog

Stop Hiding Behind Complexity and Start Delivering Continuously

Continuous delivery is achievable for any software, regardless of complexity. Success depends on investment in automation, quality, and process improvement—not technical barriers.
Videos

Stop Hoping for Quality: Why Automated Pipelines Are the Only Way to Deliver with Confidence

Stop relying on memory for quality. Discover why automated pipelines beat manual checks, and how embedding quality gates ensures trust, speed, and consistency.
Videos

Transforming Enterprises: How DevOps Drives Collaboration and Continuous Improvement

Explores how DevOps enhances enterprise collaboration, continuous improvement, automation, and customer focus to drive cultural and operational transformation.
Tags

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is a product from Microsoft that provides tools around CI/CD, collaboration, and agile project management. Other names are Team Foundation Server, TFSOnline, Visual Studio Online (VSO), and Visual Studio Team Services.
Videos

How to Tackle Technical Debt Without Halting Progress: Smarter Ways to Keep Your Team Moving Forward

Struggling with technical debt? Discover practical ways to tackle legacy systems, boost team morale, and deliver value—without grinding to a halt.
Signals

Engineering can fix technical debt, but leadership has to invest in it

Technical debt requires leadership investment to resolve; without support for automation and quality improvements, continuous delivery is not achievable for engineering teams.
Blog

Testing in Production Maximises Quality and Value

Explains how audience-based deployment and testing in production enable faster feedback, safer rollouts, and higher software quality by targeting real users and reducing risk.
Blog

Stop Promoting Branches

Explains why promoting code through multiple branches slows delivery, increases risk, and suggests GitHub Flow or Release Flow as simpler, safer alternatives for deployment.
Videos

Mastering Site Reliability: Insights from Azure DevOps on Building a Resilient Live Site Culture

Explore proven strategies from Azure DevOps for building resilient, reliable software systems—covering transparency, automation, telemetry, incident response, and team culture.
Videos

The Crucible of Learning: Transforming Organizational Effectiveness Through DevOps

Explores how DevOps transformation, refactoring, and ownership reduce technical debt, streamline development, and boost efficiency, team satisfaction, and business value.
Videos

If a client hasn't considered DevOps consulting as part of their Agile Consulting needs, why should they?

DevOps consulting enhances Agile by improving collaboration, accelerating delivery, and ensuring quality, making software development more efficient and resilient.
Videos

Transforming Agility: How Azure DevOps Went from Two-Year Releases to 880,000 Deployments

Explores how Azure DevOps shifted from slow, two-year releases to rapid, continuous delivery, highlighting the benefits of fast feedback, agility, and frequent deployments.
Engineering-Notes

Building a Resilient Token Server: Engineering for Flow, Fault Tolerance, and Speed

Explains how to engineer a robust, fault-tolerant token counting server using FastAPI and PowerShell, covering error handling, retries, fallbacks, and resilient workflows.
Videos

DevOps: Elevating Your Organization’s Performance Through Bespoke Solutions

Learn how tailored DevOps strategies help organisations assess current practices, streamline processes, ensure compliance, and boost software quality and delivery frequency.
Videos

The Common Challenges of Adopting DevOps Practices

Explores key challenges in adopting DevOps, including managing evolving risks and closing feedback loops, with strategies for rapid iteration, feedback, and continuous improvement.
Videos

Embracing Automation: The Key to Transforming Your Development Process and Boosting Confidence

Explores how automation in testing, deployment, and validation streamlines development, reduces technical debt, and builds confidence for teams and customers alike.
Videos

From Chaos to Clarity: My Journey Through DevOps and the Three Key Challenges to Overcome

Explores a developer’s transition to DevOps, highlighting key challenges: cultural change, toolchain automation, and continuous learning for effective software delivery.
Blog

Building a release pipeline with Release Management with Visual Studio 2013

Explains how to set up a scalable release pipeline using Release Management in Visual Studio 2013, covering continuous release, feedback environments, and DevOps practices.
Videos

Unlocking Value in DevOps: My Role as a Consultant in Driving Change and Overcoming Bottlenecks

Explains how a DevOps consultant identifies and resolves technical and process bottlenecks, driving continuous improvement and value delivery within organisations.
Videos

Unlocking the True Power of Continuous Delivery: How Automation Transforms Software Development

Explains how automation in continuous delivery improves software reliability, reduces risk, and enables faster, safer deployments through consistent, rapid feedback loops.
Videos

DevOps Demystified: Why It's More Than Just Tools and How to Embrace Its True Value

Explains why DevOps is a mindset focused on collaboration and continuous improvement, not just tools, and highlights its true value in modern software development practices.
Blog

Quality enablement with Visual Studio 2012

Explores how Visual Studio 2012 supports continuous quality enablement, automated testing, and rapid delivery in modern software development for higher user satisfaction.
Blog

Standard Environments for Automated Deployment and Testing

Explains how to set up and use Standard Environments in Visual Studio 2012 TFS for automated software deployment and testing, enabling consistent, repeatable pipelines.
Videos

Navigating DevOps: Crafting Unique Solutions for Unique Organizations

Explores how organisations can tailor DevOps strategies to their unique needs, highlighting the value of external expertise, adaptability, and continuous improvement.
Videos

DevOps Consulting Overview

Explore how expert DevOps consulting drives cultural change, process improvement, technical troubleshooting, and tailored solutions for efficient, reliable software delivery.
Signals

Rethinking Dev-Test-Staging-Production Pipelines for Safety

Explores why traditional Dev-Test-Staging-Production pipelines fall short and highlights audience-based deployment for safer, faster feedback in real production environments.
Signals

There a common belief that rollback is the ultimate safety net

Rollback is often riskier than rolling forward, especially for stateful apps. Safer deployment relies on progressive delivery and fail-forward strategies, not reversals.
Signals

Every delay increases the risk of failure

Delaying software releases increases failure risk. Frequent, small releases improve success rates, adaptability, and recovery, as shown by CHAOS Report and DORA metrics.
Tags

Shift Left Strategy

A Shift-Left Strategy brings testing, security, and compliance earlier in development, reducing defects, accelerating feedback, and improving quality for faster, more reliable delivery.
Signals

Why Engineering Teams Use Staging Environments for Risk Reduction

Explores how staging environments aim to reduce risk in software development, their hidden costs, and modern alternatives like feature flags and progressive rollouts.
Signals

Branch promotion is a relic of slow, manual software delivery

Explains why modern software teams avoid branch promotion, using continuous integration, feature flags, and production-like testing to streamline delivery and reduce risk.
Signals

Technical debt isn’t just messy code

Technical debt includes slow feedback, fragile systems, and manual processes that hinder progress. Addressing it early with automation and testing reduces long-term costs.
Videos

Maximising Deployment Frequency: The Key to Faster Time to Market and Business Success

Explores how increasing deployment frequency, stable environments, and fast feedback loops improve software delivery, reduce time to market, and align with business goals.
Blog

Getting started with a modern source control system and DevOps

Learn key practices for adopting modern source control and DevOps, including automation, release pipelines, and team collaboration to improve software delivery quality.
Signals

Best Branching Strategies for Development Teams Explained

Explains why environment-based branching slows development, and recommends using feature flags and progressive rollouts for simpler, faster, and safer code delivery.
Signals

Frequent releases are not just a technical strategy

Frequent software releases reduce risk, enable faster feedback, and help teams adapt to user needs, preventing costly mistakes and improving overall performance.
Videos

Is Your Project Ecosystem Truly Agile?

Explains why true agility requires end-to-end automation and short feedback loops, not just Agile teams, to maximise value and efficiency for stakeholders in project delivery.
Videos

Unlocking Code Quality: The Transformative Power of Frequent Deployments

Explores how frequent code deployments improve code quality, reduce technical debt, enable faster feedback, and support iterative, user-focused software development.
Blog

Release Management with Team Foundation Server 2012

Explains how to automate and streamline software release management using Team Foundation Server 2012, Lab Management, and Octopus, focusing on build, deployment, and quality.
Videos

Security by Design Building Secure Software

Explains how integrating security and quality early in software development—using practices like TDD, pair programming, and continuous feedback—builds robust, reliable systems.
Blog

Live Site Culture & Site Reliability Engineering

Explores how agile teams use DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering to deliver high-quality software rapidly, with insights from Microsoft’s Azure DevOps team practices.
Videos

What is your favourite DevOps consulting outcome?

A complex software project unified 80+ teams across 9 countries by adopting Azure DevOps, streamlining processes, and achieving a single engineering system.
Blog

Create a Release Management pipeline for Professional Developers

Step-by-step guide to building an automated Release Management pipeline for professional developers, covering build, deployment, environment setup, and parameterisation.
Videos

The Evolution of My Journey with Azure DevOps: Lessons and Insights

Personal experiences and lessons on using Azure DevOps, covering its evolution, migration strategies, custom tools, and practical advice for optimising DevOps workflows.
Videos

Unlocking Rapid Delivery: Overcoming Common DevOps Challenges for Agile Success

Explores common DevOps challenges to rapid delivery, highlighting automation, feedback loops, mindset shifts, and compliance for achieving agile, efficient software delivery.
Blog

Open-source with VSTS or TFS and Github for better DevOps

Learn how to automate code synchronisation between VSTS/TFS and GitHub, enabling seamless DevOps workflows for open-source projects with flexible configuration options.
Videos

Mastering Azure DevOps Migration: Navigating Challenges, Solutions, and Best Practices

Learn about Azure DevOps migration, including common scenarios, challenges, solutions, and best practices for planning, testing, and ensuring a smooth transition.
Videos

Mastering Data Integrity: The Key to Successful DevOps Migrations

Learn how to maintain data integrity during DevOps migrations, weighing full versus selective data transfer, managing risks, and ensuring team readiness for Azure DevOps.
Videos

Mastering the Migration: Seamlessly Transitioning from TFS to Azure DevOps

Step-by-step guide to migrating from Team Foundation Server (TFS) to Azure DevOps, covering tools, validation, common issues, account alignment, and best practices.
Signals

Why Organisations Believe Their Software Is Too Complex for CD

Many organisations cite software complexity as a barrier to continuous delivery, but real obstacles are technical debt and lack of investment in quality and automation.
Signals

let-us do the maths

Explains how slow product release cycles delay feature delivery, risk losing relevance, and create competitive disadvantages, highlighting the benefits of faster iterations.
Signals

Deploying Windows OS Directly to Production: Then vs Now

Explains how Windows OS updates shifted from infrequent, risky releases to safe, staged rollouts using ring-based deployment and real-time user feedback for reliability.
Signals

Every unreleased feature is a cost

Unreleased features create hidden costs and risks. Regular software delivery reduces failure rates, rework, and missed opportunities, ensuring real value is delivered.
Tags

One Engineering System

One Engineering System (1ES) is a strategic standardised, integrated framework designed to streamline software development by unifying tools, processes, and practices across teams. It provides a consistent, scalable foundation that supports high-quality, efficient, and secure software delivery.
Signals

If every release feels high-risk, you lack a true Definition of Done

Releases feel risky when teams lack a clear Definition of Done. Learn how a strong DoD ensures stress-free, reliable software delivery with built-in quality and security.
Signals

Staging Environments Do Not Prevent Production Failures

Staging environments can’t fully replicate production, often leading to false confidence. Real risk reduction comes from safe, incremental releases to actual users.
Videos

Technical Debt Management for Long-Term Quality

Explains how managing and repaying technical debt improves software quality, delivery speed, and long-term value by addressing both known and unknown code issues.
Videos

Scaling Smart: How to Tackle Technical Debt for Sustainable Growth

Learn how unmanaged technical debt can hinder growth, and discover strategies like sustainable architecture, DevOps, and automation to scale efficiently and maintain quality.
Videos

Embrace Simplicity: How to Transform Complexity into Continuous Delivery Success

Explains how simplifying complex software and committing to change enables continuous delivery, highlighting the need for cultural shift, resilience, and ongoing improvement.
Videos

Rethinking Continuous Delivery: Why Best Practices Don't Exist in Complex Environments

Explores why fixed best practices don’t suit complex continuous delivery, highlighting adaptive approaches like audience-based delivery, testing in production, and ongoing improvement.
Videos

Code Reviews for Quality Assurance

Explores modern code review practices, emphasising automation, pre-reviewed code, and shift-left strategies to improve software quality, speed, and team collaboration.
Tags

Internal Developer Platform

An Internal Developer Platform streamlines development processes, enabling teams to build, test, and deploy applications efficiently within a controlled environment.
Videos

How important is DevOps in continuous delivery of value to customers?

Explains how DevOps and Agile work together to enable continuous delivery, rapid feedback, and customer value in software development and product delivery.
Signals

Why Using a Blocked Column in Azure DevOps Is a Mistake

Explains why a “Blocked” column in Azure DevOps hinders workflow, and suggests using tags and tracking to manage blocked work more effectively and visibly.
Videos

Empowering Leadership: Driving Cultural Change for Agile Success

Explores how effective leadership drives cultural change, supports agile practices, and fosters collaboration through vision, automation, learning, and breaking down silos.
Videos

Unlocking Continuous Delivery: How Feature Flags Transform Software Development

Explains how feature flags enable safe, incremental software releases, support continuous delivery, and use user feedback to improve features before full rollout.
Videos

Unlocking the Future of Software Development: Why Automation is Your Key to Success

Explores how automation boosts software development by reducing errors, speeding up deployments, and ensuring consistent, high-quality releases in dynamic environments.
Blog

The High of Release

Overview of Microsoft’s new web-based Release Management tools for building flexible, integrated DevOps pipelines in VSTS and TFS, supporting diverse deployment options.
Videos

Why is DevOps such a Critical Element of Software Engineering?

DevOps integrates development and operations to enable continuous delivery, faster feedback, and efficient product deployment in modern software engineering.
Videos

What is Your Peeve in DevOps

Explores common DevOps frustrations, debunks the myth that continuous delivery is unattainable, and highlights the importance of empowering developers in agile teams.
Videos

Why Embracing Automation is Essential for Reducing Human Error in Software Development

Explores how automation in software development reduces human error, improves reliability, and streamlines workflows, using real-world examples and practical insights.
Videos

Unlocking the Superpower of Software Development: How Shifting Left Transforms Quality Assurance

Explains how adopting a shift-left approach in software development improves quality, speeds up delivery, reduces costs, and fosters collaboration by involving QA early.
Videos

Empowering Your Team: Why Quick Fixes in Agile and DevOps Are a Myth

Explains why lasting Agile and DevOps success requires empowering teams and building internal capability, not relying on quick fixes or external consultants for solutions.
Blog

Virtual Labs in the modern application lifecycle

Explores how virtual labs help development and operations teams manage, test, and automate complex modern application environments using virtualisation technologies.
Videos

Navigating the Complex World of Azure DevOps Data Migration

Learn key steps, common pitfalls, and best practices for migrating data from legacy TFS systems to Azure DevOps, including identity alignment, database cleanup, and backups.
Videos

Is Your Engineering Culture Ready to Scale with Your Technology?

Explores why scaling technology alone isn’t enough, highlighting the need for engineering cultures that support collaboration, DevOps, and continuous learning as teams grow.
Videos

Seamless Migration to Azure DevOps: Unlocking Enhanced Collaboration and Productivity

Learn how to migrate projects to Azure DevOps using self-service or managed tools, ensuring accurate data transfer, improved collaboration, and streamlined development workflows.
Tags

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is the practice of frequently delivering small increments of valuable product directly to real users, enabling rapid feedback, validation, and continuous improvement from the very first iteration.
Tags

GitHub

GitHub is a platform for version control and collaboration, offering tools for code hosting, CI/CD, project management, and team collaboration.
Signals

Git Flow should have died years ago

Explains why Git Flow is outdated for modern software, highlighting its drawbacks and recommending simpler workflows like GitHub Flow for faster, continuous delivery.

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