Azure DevOps Interview Questions with Sample Answers: What is The Difference Between Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server?
DevOps is a constantly evolving and rapidly changing practice. Azure DevOps (Microsoft’s cloud service) is relatively new in most organizations and a very lucrative specialization among IT professionals. Azure DevOps specialists are among the most paid IT practitioners, and their demand is skyrocketing each passing day. This explains why there is an increased number of techies venturing into DevOps.
So, how do you break into this highly rewarding career?
Whether you are a newbie or a more experienced professional in Azure DevOps, you need to acquaint yourself with the most frequently asked interview questions. We will discuss the most common questions that you will not miss in any Azure DevOps interview. And to make you nail that interview, we go-ahead to provide you with sample answers to the questions and, at best, how to approach them. So, without further ado, Most Common Azure DevOps Interview Questions and Sample Answers:
Tell Us About Yourself.
What? I know you must be wondering what has this question has to do with the Azure DevOps interview…I get it. But here is what you should drill into your skull (and make it stick there): This question will never miss in any interview – Azure DevOps interview is not an exception. You should be wondering instead how to approach it. I can help you with that. Here is how to approach this question in Azure DevOps interviews…
You should tailor your answer to showcase your learning path towards certification on Azure DevOps training and briefly demonstrate your working experience in any DevOps technology. Even if you don’t possess any practical experience in Azure DevOps, you can always point out some training you embarked on, on areas closely related to DevOps practice. Showcasing DevOps’ knowledge in the about yourself section not only tells the interviewer about you but will go a long way to solidify your fit for the role. And this is how you stand out from the competition. You would have killed two birds with one stone, right? You can thank me later.
What is Your Understanding of DevOps?
This question might sound simple. But you should know better – Every interview question always has an objective. You might be wondering why not just ask about Azure DevOps specifically… Don’t worry. That will come in just a jiffy. What is important here is to understand the question’s intent and, of course, the interviewer’s. Here, the interviewer’s objective is to get your general understanding of DevOps and effectively achieve tangible results in an organization. DevOps stands for development and operations. Traditionally, DevOps used to be tied to aspects to do with information technology(IT) only. But current practices seem to suggest adopting the term to include the enterprise-wide collaboration between software development and operations (end-user support). It, therefore, includes a whole facet of activities in development and operations in the entire organization.
However, do not just stop at the definition. You can go ahead and elicit to the interviewer the benefits of DevOps in an organization; which include things like:
- Continuous delivery of value to end-users
- Speeding organization’s processes.
- Faster delivery of software services.
- Ensure quality capture of stakeholder feedback.
- Faster identification of functionality bugs in software products.
What is Azure DevOps?
This was expected. Yes. However, to increase your chances of getting that dream job, you need to answer this question comprehensively. After all, what is the point of nailing a question that reveals your understanding of the actual role you are interviewing for? I guess we both know the answer to that – To get the job. Does the name Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) ring a bell to you? If yes, then you already know what we are talking about. Azure DevOps is actually the new and improved version of VSTS. VSTS, as you already know, is simply an application management tool. And for those who still don’t have a clue of what we are talking about, relax. The ship is not yet gone: Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that provides a collective toolset for developing and deploying software applications. You can even go ahead and brag to the interviewer about the benefits of Microsoft’s Azure DevOps; which in their terms, enable organizations:
- Plan smarter
- Collaborate better
- And ship faster with a set of modern dev services.
What are Some Examples of the DevOps Tools?
As simple and straightforward as it sounds, this question might just require you to dig in deeper – mention more than just examples.
Some common examples of DevOps tools:
- Jenkins
- Bamboo
- Gitlab
- Ansible
- Puppet
- Azure pipelines
- TeamCity
Don’t just stop after mentioning some of these tools. Doing this tells the interviewer that you lack substance. Here, the secret juice is to elaborate instances where you used one (or several) of the tools and what you find fascinating. Better still, the job description will usually mention knowledge of some desired tools. As a smart interviewee, this should give you a hint of what tools the interviewer might be interested in. Conduct some research on the tools, and you will be insured to beat the interview hands down.
What is Continuous Testing and Which DevOps Tools Enable Continuous Testing?
You should approach this question from a practical point of view. Let the interviewer know your understanding of continuous testing and suggest possible best practices. You see, it’s not always about answering an interview question wrong or right. In most cases, the interviewer wants to know how you approach problems – what is your problem-solving process like. Therefore, you should always showcase this while answering some questions – especially this one. Approach aside, continuous testing is the automated testing of applications and processes in a DevOps environment. Through the writing of scripts to automatically test processes, continuous testing is achieved.
Some of the popular DevOps tools for continuous testing:
- JMeter
- Soap UI
- Cucumber
- Selenium
What is The Difference Between Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server?
This question tries to test your knowledge of cloud computing and its architectures. While answering this question, put yourself in the shoes of a company trying to choose the Azure service to implement. Help the company to find the best Azure solution.
But before you offer your solution, ensure you first differentiate the two: Azure DevOps Services is Microsoft’s cloud service which enables organizations to make their processes highly scalable, reliable, and secure. On the other hand, Azure DevOps Server is an on-premises Microsoft service implemented on top of the SQL Server database.
What Factors Should Be Considered When Choosing Between Azure DevOps Services and Azure DevOps Server?
This is one of the most important questions whose objective is to identify your practical knowledge of Azure platforms.
The organization interviewing you wants to trust you to give them the best solution when implementing Azure solutions. This is now the chance to show them you’re the best fit.
Some of the factors that come to play while considering the two platforms are:
- Data security
- User authentication policy
- Process customization
- Scope of the data
- Frequency of data access
- User groups management
- Cost
- Scalability
What Are Azure Boards and Mention Some of Their Benefits?
Azure boards are Azure DevOps services that enable organizations to plan and track multiple processes across teams. Simply put, it’s like a platform where you bring all your ideas to life and track each activity in the same place. Azure boards easily integrate with Kanban boards, team dashboards, and backlogs.
Some of the benefits of Azure Boards include:
- Keeps your entire team aligned with any change made on code.
- Simplify planning meetings because of the built-in scrum boards.
- Integrates with analytics tools to give you powerful insights on ongoing projects.
- Integration with Microsoft Office.
- Enables easy customization.
What is Azure Repos? | Azure DevOps Interview Questions
Are you conversant with version control? Have you used Git before? Well, if these terminologies are not new to you, then explaining Azure Repos won’t give you any headache in an interview. Azure Repos is simply a version control system for tracking changes in code across software development teams. Questions about Azure Repos frequently appear on Azure DevOps interviews because they play a vital role in the software development life-cycle. As a DevOps specialist, this is one of the tools you would be using almost daily; thus, the interviewer wants to make sure you are rock solid on it.
Elaborate The Importance of Continuous Integration(CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD)
As an interviewee, try to show the interviewer that you are not there to answer questions. Exude some confidence and show the panel (or whoever is interviewing you) that you understand the reasoning behind the question at hand. That said, let’s now come back to the importance of CI and CD. Through Azure pipelines, CI and CD ensure that the code for various software is up to date and is of high quality.
In addition to ensuring quality code, CI and CD provide the following benefits to Azure DevOps:
- Enables easy integration with other version control systems like GitHub.
- Facilitates working with open-source projects.
- Supports integration with most programming languages.
- Enables simultaneous deployment of Azure services.
We have discussed some of the most frequently asked Azure DevOps interview questions. While there might be many missing on the list (feel free to add on the comment section), the ones here will never miss any Azure DevOps interview.
However, the important takeaway is the approach you should take while answering these questions in an interview. We have also given some sample answers to the above-listed questions.
Also read Office Manager Interview Questions + Sample Answers
