“We’re learning as we go and accepting any false starts as being a part of the process”

In 2019, I was first introduced to Microsoft’s Azure DevOps (ADO) platform by a senior manager who had heard good things about it and wondered if it could help our team’s database upgrade project. We were a six-person IT team trying to upgrade a core CRM system along with its associated database and dependent systems. Technical debt was high and skill levels were siloed. We needed to find a way to collaborate better, track our work and progress, and pull our code into a single-source control system.

I’d done exploratory work in Azure and I knew what DevOps was as a concept, so I thought I had a head start. However, I quickly found out that ADO isn’t in Azure and it doesn’t automatically deliver a DevOps approach. It didn’t take long to find out that ADO was Microsoft’s updated and modernised version of Team Foundation Server (TFS) and that it aims to be a centralised place where teams can plan, develop, deploy and track their work. Plus, it