Share via

Practical guidance on the concepts of DevOps, continuous delivery and release management

  • Article

The ALM Rangers introduced the DevOps Workbench solution and practical guidance in collaboration with the Patterns & Practices book Building a Release Pipeline with TFS, as a great way to start learning the concepts of DevOps & Release Management for TFS 2012 and to kick the tires.

clip_image002[5]clip_image004[5] Introducing some of the leads of the phenomenal collaboration effort, from the left to right: John Spinella (ALM Ranger Tooling), Casey O'Mara (ALM Ranger Guidance), David Pitcher (ALM Ranger Dev Lead) and Larry Brader (p&p, Book).

Practical DevOps guidance solutions

image

Building a Release Pipeline with Team Foundation Server

clip_image002

Demonstrates how to build a release pipeline with Team Foundation Server 2012. It uses an iterative approach that begins with a flawed pipeline and ends with one that has automation, parallel stages, and monitoring. A collaboration between p&p and the ALM Rangers.

ALM Rangers DevOps

clip_image002[4]

DevOps Deployment is based around build once, and deploy to multiple environments. The companion DevOps Deployment Workbench Express reference solution that accompanies and demonstrates the guidance targets the small organization with multiple personas and a need for a continuous delivery cycle to provide business value, and agility. A great way to become acclimated to the concepts for release management and apply them while using Team Foundation Server 2012.

DevOps bug resolution using IntelliTrace

clip_image002[6]

Supplements the Test Tooling Guide with the DevOps end-end scenario, giving you access to ALM end to end labs and guidance that include bug resolution using IntelliTrace.

When we engage in DevOps discussions, the following solution is mentioned frequently:

  • InRelease – the future of release management in TFS to be included & packaged with Team Foundation Server 2013. Once you have learned the concepts in the guidance then you are ready to begin using the release management capabilities in Team Foundation Server 2013.

When to consider which solution

So, when should you consider which product and what are the possible migration strategies?

I would like image

Targeting TFS 2012

Targeting TFS 2013

I need Support

Enterprise scale

We recommend you peruse image

Practical guidance on building a release pipeline with TFS

X

X

    

To learn / explore concepts of DevOps

X

X

    

Practical guidance on resolving bugs in production

X

      

Implement a

frequent / continuous delivery cycle environment

X

(X)1

limited2

  

Implement a frequent / continuous delivery cycle environment

  

X

X

X
  • Release Management for Team Foundation Server 2013

1

Although the guidance and reference solution will work in a TFS 2013 environment, the future of release management in TFS will be the release management capabilities that will be included in TFS 2013 and Visual Studio 2013. These capabilities derive from our acquisition of the InRelease product that was announced in Summer 2013. If you graduate your learnings of the concepts in the guidance and reference solution, you will find that you will be on the right path to use the release management capabilities of Team Foundation Server 2013.

2

Support is limited to Rangers and community engagements and assistance.

Words from our product owner, Ed

Release Management & DevOps has become such an important part of the modern application lifecycle.  Simplifying releases to production and dev/test environments is the next step in realizing more frequent & less stressful deliveries.  The first step is through deployment automation and the DevOps ALM Rangers project will get you going on starting on the right foot!  It pairs nicely with Team Foundation Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 and helps you solve common scenarios while applying what you have learned based on the Patterns & Practices guidance.  You can then take the skills you learn with the DevOps ALM Rangers project and apply them to future investments into Team Foundation Server 2013 for release management that has come from our acquisition of the InRelease product announced earlier this summer.

The ALM Rangers Team!

This is the team that made this solution a reality, whereby it is important to emphasize that they all invested their personal family time to work on this adventure part-time, after-hours, around the globe … thank you team!

image

Please send candid feedback!

Which features do you need in the next version? What do you like and dislike in the current version?

We can’t wait to hear from you, and learn more about your experience using the add-in. Here are some ways to connect with us:

  • Ask a question on the respective CodePlex discussion forum.
  • Contact me on my blog.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 10, 2013
    This feels like it has a lot of overlap with the new InRelease tools, any integration or synergy planned between the two products?

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2013
    @Betty, the team has been collaborating closely with the InRelease product team and we are careful not to create feature overlap. I recommend that you watch the Channel9 video where Casey elaborates this topic. The ALM Rangers DevOps project allows you to start learning about the release management practices and you can begin to implement them with TFS 2012.  Paired with the p&p book "Building a Release Pipeline with TFS" the guidance and workbench is a great way to get acclimated to the concepts for release management and apply them. Watch the space for announcements for the above mentioned guidance and p&p book.

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2013
    I have TFS 2013 and VS 2013 RC installed on my machine, but I can't seem to get the tool to work. Is this only supported on VS 2012 and not VS2013? :-s

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2013
    @Dave, at this stage we are only targeting VS 2012 with the BETA. We have raised a bug against the extension to support installation with VS 2013.

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2013
    The comment has been removed