TFS 2015 offers many great Release Management enhancements. A new web interface, dashboards, and tasks for deploying to Windows and Linux platforms among others.

1. Daniel Mann
Senior Software Development Consultant
InCycle Software
Release Management in TFS 2015

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3. • What’s new in 2015?
• What’s coming?
• Why is it coming?
• How do I prepare for it?
• When it coming?

4. • Client-side performance improvements
• Client-side display tweaks (builds are ordered
alphabetically)
• Ability to release “vNext” (task-based) Builds

5. • Release Management 2013 / 2015
vs
• Release Management Service
• Agent-based release template
vs
• vNext release template

6. Release Management Server is not
going anywhere!

7. • Release capabilities natively integrated into Team
Foundation Server
• Robust web UI – no more client software
• Some concepts will carry over, some will not
• Separation of Release and Deployment

8. Release:
• What software am I releasing?
• To what environment am I releasing it?
• Who is responsible for approving/validating the release?
• Release metrics (time between releases, length of release, etc)
Deployment:
• How do I configure this environment so it can run my software?
• How do I install my software?

9. Design
Approval
Workflow
Design
environment
configuration
Choose
build
artifacts to
release
Execute
Release
Capture
metrics
Design
Software
Installation

10. • Ease of use
• Tighter integration with TFS / VSO
• Huge focus on going cross-platform and cross-technology
• Existing RM deployment model was tightly coupled to Windows
and .NET
• Plenty of other deployment tools out there that are already
mature and feature-rich
• “Classic” release templates don’t scale well
• “Classic” release templates don’t enforce Configuration As Code

11. • Your environment configuration and deployment
should ideally be:
Comprehensible (to everyone!)
Source-controlled
Versioned along with the application(s) being deployed
• Why?
Prevents configuration drift
Better auditing
Better understanding of environment capabilities

12. • If you’re using actions in “classic” (agent-based)
release templates, avoid using that model for new
projects
• Start deploying new projects with PowerShell
scripts, DSC, or Chef
• Use Release Management to invoke those scripts
and manage the approval workflows
• Consider redesigning existing releases using the
above model

14. + Easy to write (for developers)
+ Mature -- lots of documentation available
- Hard to write / understand (for non-developers)
- Not a configuration management tool
- Fundamentally still tightly coupled to Windows /
Microsoft products

15. + Easy to write and read for everyone
- May require additional education
- Limited resources out of the box for common tasks
- Linux support exists, but is in its infancy
- Difficult to discover new resources (PowerShell 5
helps with this)

16. + Large community
+ Large repository of cookbooks for common tasks
- Chef server requires Linux
- Recipes are all written in Ruby
- Requires Chef client to be installed on all target
machines

17. • Existing RM release templates cannot be imported
to Release Management Service
• Guidance and tooling to help smooth the
migration will be released

18. There is no specific release date.
Availability in VSO sometime in 2015.*
Available in on-prem TFS in mid-2016.*

20. Book Your TFS
2015 Upgrade
by December
31st!
Microsoft
Program
/InCycleSoftware @InCycleSoftware /company/incycle-software incyclesoftware.com/blog/
Contact us: info@incyclesoftware.com
1-(800) 565-0510

21. Upcoming webcasts:
What’s New & Why You Need to Upgrade – November 3rd 11am PT/2pm ET
TFS 2015 Upgrade Scenarios & How to Avoid Surprises – November 20th 10am PT/1pm ET