Skunkworks AZ-400 DevOps Accelerator

Enterprise-ready, hands-on learning path for AZ-400. Build real CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions with production-grade practices, accessible on desktop and mobile.

🎯 Course Overview

Skunkworks AZ-400 DevOps Accelerator is a self-paced, instructor-supported program that combines theory, live demos, and labs. The course is structured into 3 modules, each with escalating 6 levels (Foundations → Capstone). Learners earn XP and badges as they progress.

Audience: Devs, SREs, QA, Platform & Release Engineers
Prereqs: Basic Git, Node/JS familiarity, Azure subscription access (or free trial)
Outcomes:
- Design and implement CI/CD pipelines on Azure DevOps & GitHub Actions
- Integrate testing, quality gates, and security scanning
- Release safely with blue/green, canary, and approvals
- Instrument pipelines for reliability, cost, and speed

Modules

🧭 Curriculum (Modules & Levels)

Each level contains: lesson, interactive activities, and a hands-on lab.

Module	Focus	Levels
1	CI/CD Foundations	Foundations • Comprehension • Application • Analysis • Evaluation • Capstone
2	Environments & Release	Foundations • Comprehension • Application • Analysis • Evaluation • Capstone
3	Observability & Governance	Foundations • Comprehension • Application • Analysis • Evaluation • Capstone

Detailed Outline

### Module 1 — CI/CD Foundations - **Foundations:** CI basics, branch strategies, runners/agents - **Comprehension:** Test pyramid, caching, artifacts, packages - **Application:** GitHub Actions / Azure Pipelines build - **Analysis:** Flakiness, parallelism, matrix builds - **Evaluation:** Quality gates (lint, coverage, SAST) - **Capstone:** Full CI pipeline with caching + tests + artifacts ### Module 2 — Environments & Release - **Foundations:** Deploy targets, infra as code basics - **Comprehension:** Environments, approvals, secrets - **Application:** Blue/green & canary with gates - **Analysis:** Rollback strategies, feature flags - **Evaluation:** Change failure rate, MTTR, DORA - **Capstone:** Multi-stage CD with approvals and targeted rollouts ### Module 3 — Observability & Governance - **Foundations:** Logs, metrics, traces for pipelines and apps - **Comprehension:** Dashboards, alerts, SLIs/SLOs - **Application:** Cost & performance guardrails - **Analysis:** Compliance, artifact provenance, SBOM - **Evaluation:** Policy as code (OPA/GitHub rulesets) - **Capstone:** Governance dashboard + policy-enforced release

Course timeline

🧪 Labs (Hands-On)

Lab 1.1: Create CI with tests & cache (GitHub Actions or Azure Pipelines)
Lab 1.3: Publish artifacts & SBOM
Lab 2.2: Staged deployments with approvals
Lab 2.4: Canary rollout + feature flags
Lab 3.1: Instrument CI/CD metrics (duration, success rate)
Lab 3.5: Policy as code enforcing quality gates

See /AZ-400/labs and in-app level pages for exact steps.

🚀 Getting Started (Dev)

# from repo root
cd AZ-400/web
npm i
npm run dev
# open http://localhost:3000/course

Production (GitHub Pages): a workflow (see below) builds static HTML with DEPLOY_TARGET=gh-pages so the site serves under /Microsoft/AZ-400.

📦 Tech Stack

Next.js 15 (App Router) + React 18 + TypeScript
IBM Carbon Design System (responsive, accessible)
MDX content, Zustand client state
Playwright e2e, Vitest unit testing

flowchart LR
  A[MDX Lessons] --> C[Next.js Pages]
  B[JSON Activities] --> C
  C --> D(IBM Carbon UI)
  D --> E{Static Export}
  E -->|GitHub Actions| F[GitHub Pages]

📈 Roadmap

Replace placeholder content with client-approved syllabus
Add Leaderboard (Supabase adapter)
Accessibility audit against WCAG 2.2 AA
Add scenario & comparator widgets

💼 Commercials

Package	Duration	Format	Price	Notes
Self-paced	2–4 weeks	Asynchronous	$X per learner	Includes forum support, updates
Cohort (virtual)	3 days	Live + labs	$X per learner	Min 15 learners, live Q\&A
Enterprise onsite	2–3 days	Onsite workshop	$X/day	Custom labs, NDA option

Volume discounts available. Contact: hello@skunkworksacademy.com

📚 Resources

Course site: /Microsoft/AZ-400/
Labs: /AZ-400/labs/
Support: Issues tab or email above

🔧 GitHub Pages Deploy (CI)

# .github/workflows/az400-pages.yml
name: Deploy AZ-400 Site
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
    paths: [ 'AZ-400/**', '.github/workflows/az400-pages.yml' ]
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write
jobs:
  build-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      DEPLOY_TARGET: gh-pages
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with: { node-version: 20, cache: npm }
      - name: Install
        run: npm ci
        working-directory: AZ-400/web
      - name: Build
        run: npm run build
        working-directory: AZ-400/web
      - uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with: { path: AZ-400/web/out }
      - uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

✍️ Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Please include screenshots or a brief Loom for UI changes.

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