Azure DevOps: From 2-Year Releases to 880K Deploys
Explores how Azure DevOps shifted from slow, two-year releases to rapid, continuous delivery, highlighting the benefits of fast feedback, agility, and …
TL;DR; Slow release cycles mean customer needs go unmet and competitors gain an edge. Microsoft’s shift from a two-year delivery cycle to three-week sprints allowed them to deliver features in days, improving customer satisfaction and competitiveness. Accelerate your delivery process to stay relevant and meet customer demands faster.

Let’s do the maths.
If your product team delivers every two years, that means feature requests take four years to hit production.
How many customer needs stay relevant over four years? How many competitors ship improvements while you’re still planning your release?
This was Microsoft’s reality with TFS. They had a 2-year cycle, a growing feature backlog, and increasing customer dissatisfaction. The cost of slow delivery wasn’t just an engineering problem, it was a competitive disadvantage.
When they switched to 3-week Sprints and decoupled release from deployment, everything changed. Features went live in days, not years.
Speed matters. Your competitors aren’t waiting, why are you?
Each classification [Concepts, Categories, & Tags] was assigned using AI-powered semantic analysis and scored across relevance, depth, and alignment. Final decisions? Still human. Always traceable. Hover to see how it applies.
If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.
We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.

Higher Education Statistics Agency

Teleplan

Jack Links

Workday

Trayport

Philips

Illumina

Graham & Brown

Ericson

Emerson Process Management

Schlumberger

Epic Games

New Signature

Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company)

Cognizant Microsoft Business Group (MBG)

Slaughter and May

Qualco

Microsoft

Washington Department of Enterprise Services

Nottingham County Council

New Hampshire Supreme Court

Department of Work and Pensions (UK)

Washington Department of Transport

Ghana Police Service

Deliotte

Ericson

Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company)

Teleplan

Qualco

DFDS