Roadmap270 words
Unit 3 — Build and release pipelines — roadmap
Unit 3 — Design and implement build and release pipelines
Exam weight: 50–55% — over half the exam · 6 topics · 35 learning objectives
This is the unit to know cold. It is also where the July 2026 blueprint revision moved weight up, and where a pre-2026 study guide is most out of date.
| Topic | Objectives | Core idea |
|---|---|---|
| 3.1 Package management | 4 | Upstream sources give availability, auditability and integrity |
| 3.2 Testing strategy | 4 | Two gate boundaries with two different owners |
| 3.3 Pipelines | 9 | Jobs parallel, stages sequential |
| 3.4 Deployments | 8 | Limit blast radius; make rollback real |
| 3.5 Infrastructure as code | 5 | One template, parameter file per environment |
| 3.6 Maintaining pipelines | 5 | Measure before optimising |
The five things to carry
- Jobs run in parallel by default; stages run sequentially. Opposite defaults, and
dependsOn: []is how a stage opts out. extendsconstrains,templatecomposes. Typed parameters are what make the constraint enforceable — and task groups do not exist in YAML.- Checks are owned by the resource owner, in five ordered categories, with Exclusive lock last.
rollingis VM-only and its hooks fire per batch.runOncefires each hook once.- Expand → Migrate → Contract for schema changes.
on: failurerestores code, not data.
Currency warnings
Azure Automation State Configuration retires 30 Sep 2027 → Machine Configuration. Managed DevOps Pools now supersede VM Scale Set agents as the recommendation for elastic self-hosted capacity.