Maxim Salnikov
Developer Engagement Lead
November 26th, we had an online Microsoft DevOps Forum Norway. This is a recap of this event including presentation slides from the speakers, some technical questions we received and answered, and a list of the useful resources for you and your company to have a successful DevOps Journey.
You can watch the recording of this event on-demand. Just fill in the form and you will immediately receive a link to the video in your email.
During the event, we had the following sessions (link to the slides is below):
You might be interested in going through the collection of the slides from our speakers, and the resources for you to learn about DevOps:
| Question | Answer |
| Do you have a good definition of the word Epic in DevOps | I like to call it «business initative». This one I think is a good reference: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/epic/ and then there’s this one as well: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/boards/backlogs/define-features-epics?view=azure-devops&tabs=agile-process#what-comprises-a-feature-or-epic / – Mathias |
| How do you pick tool for the job? I mean GitHub vs Azure DevOps? Both are Microsoft products and can do the same (mostly). | GitHub is great for collaborative software development and it has built-in code security features, but it is more developer centric. With Boards for example Azure DevOps also supports people who are responsible for planning & tracking or test management. You can also use both platforms together – Bas Azure DevOps have some features that are not in GitHub, like Test Management. If you need that you could use it from Azure DevOps and connect to GitHub. It would then make sense to also use Azure Boards, since Test Cases are workitems. GitHub has a very rich extension system with good 3rd party tools. If you just need something kind of like Azure Boards, Zenhub is a very good 3rd party tool for that, very well integrated. On builds, GitHub actions and Azure pipelines are very similar, when you use the Yaml builds in ADO, but GitHub actions are easier to set up with a more easy syntax. – Terje |
| Would a project have more than one Epic, or is the Epic which equals MVP the project description? | It all depends on your project. For a larger system you can have multiple Epics, that would be pretty normal. You break them down in features and then to PBIs and then to tasks. Your hierarchy gets deep, and that may be good or hard. For a small project you often would not use Epics at all. So, it all depends. – Terje |
| Is GitHub going to take over Azure DevOps functionality, and replacing totally Az DevOps ? | Microsofts longer-term strategy is to bring the best of both products together into a single product experience in GitHub. Microsoft will also continue to evolve and support Azure DevOps while executing on the longer-term strategy. |
| You’re a consultant starting a new assignment. What would your first steps be for getting familiar with the DevOps environment at the client? | Hopefully there will exist documentation regarding this, but if not, a good way to learn is to ask to co-write the docs with some of the more experienced members of the team. This way you might also be able to come up with improvements to the existing setup. A quick question in Slack (or the communication tool of choice) on how to get a «hello world»-style app out in «production» would also be a good start. – Christer |
| Is there a way to access an agent locally in Azure Pipelines? I’ve had a great trouble building my C%2B%2B project with CMake. If I had an identical local instance of the agent locally, I would have used less time on finding why CMake does not find packages even with vcpkg. One run of the pipeline took at least 5 min, so debugging was a pain. Is there a way having an identical «agent» to test with outside of the pipeline? | Will installing a local agent help you? See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjCOc4g-AdY |
| Can GitHub host a website by itself? | You can use GitHub Pages for this purpose: https://pages.github.com/ – Christer |
| When it comes to MS Secure DLC practices, is Microsoft taking steps in the direction to provide more integrated tools in AzDevOps to avoid 3rd party enterprise solutions for code quality, OSS etc. (i.e. Sonarqube, WhiteSource)? Also, any feature availability for feature flags/toggle directly integrated in Azure DevOps? (I know about Azure App config feature management) | Regarding feature flags, there’s nothing built in. The Azure app config works nicely with AzDO for that scenario. There are of course 3rd party solutions as well, like Launch Darkly, with some integration with AzDO. |
| I authorized access to SSO-enabled orgs, and I see them under ‘My Work’ organizations and repositories, however I don’t see issues or PRs assigned to me (or created by me) in the Issues view. I only see the ones I created in my own repos. | In the issues view I have tabs in the top, and if I click on «assigned» I can for instance see issues assigned to me. I use the Android version of the app btw, not sure if that might be related. – Christer |
| The problem with Pull Requests is often that there is loads of changes in different files, following f. ex. refactoring or merging feature branches. Ideas to how the Pull Request review experience can be improved? | At GitHub we are working on pull request revisions to help reviewers to more easily identify which code has changed since their previous review. See https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/54 – Bas |
| Where does GitHub store its files? In what countries/regions? | When you use GitHub.com your data is located in the United States. If you want data to be located in some other region you can use GitHub Server and run it in a cloud of choice or on your own infrastructure. |
| Are there ways to ensure that using GitHub for devops will be secure and in compliance with legislation regarding secure data/personal data? | Yes, there are – Bas |
| Follow up on the geo location of files, are there plans to change this? As it might be issues related to this for certain companies etc. Or is the solution to set up ones own GitHub server in the foreseeable future? | We are working on new offer that is a fully managed GitHub environment with data locality – Bas |
| Follow up on the geo location of files. Does the same apply for Azure DevOps? Or can each customer customize which region Azure DevOps use to store data? | With Azure DevOps you can select what Azure region to place your org in. You can also move them between regions. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/organizations/accounts/change-organization-location?view=azure-devops. |
| In GitHub pull request I kind of miss a tree structure overview of all of the files involved in the pull request, to quickly find the best starting point/files for reviewing. Do you have any plans for functionality like this? Right now I’m using Octotree plugin, but would be nice if this was part of GitHub. 🙂 | You can filter files in the change set and mark files as viewed, but a tree view is currently not on the roadmap – Bas |
How to follow all Microsoft Norway’s and local tech communities’ events about Azure cloud for the developers – conferences, seminars, workshops, training, webinars, etc.? Just follow our technical twitter https://twitter.com/MSDevNo or hashtag #MSDevNo
To stay connected:
Feel free to send your questions about the Azure cloud technology and educational events here: maxim.salnikov@microsoft.com
Maxim Salnikov
Developer Engagement Lead at Microsoft Norway
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