Prototyping at the Speed of Light

Tech Tip Tuesday Series

This post is part of a weekly series, where I will be sharing one technology-related tip in two minutes or less. Read the previous post here.

SUBJECT
Rapidly Deploying an App to the Cloud (for free!)

WHAT
The lean approach to building software requires gathering real user feedback early and often in the development of your product. This means that software engineers need to be able to rapidly build software and deploy it into a production environment (i.e. not their laptop). And while there are many great frameworks, techniques, and tools for efficiently building software, deploying to a production environment can be a slower, and sometimes, more complicated process.

However, with the Azure App Service you can create a production environment, setup a continuous deployment pipeline, and have your app hosted in less time than it takes to get a coffee. And all of this is completely free for up to 10 apps — no 45 day trials or any other strings attached.

HOW
As a one-time prerequisite, you will need to create a free Microsoft Azure account here, if you do not already have one. This step is the longest step of the entire process, and it only takes a minute.

After that, you will create a new app service within the Azure portal and tell it where to pull your source code from. That’s all there is to it!

1. Select the“App Services” tab in the side menu and click the “Add” button.
2. Select “Web App” as your application type and click “Create.”
3. Enter an an “App name” and click “Create”(you can leave all the other fields with their default values).
4. Once your app is created you can select it on the “App Services” screen.
5. From there, select the “Deployment Center” tab.
6. Now select the location where Azure should pull your source code from (my personal preference is GitHub).
7. For simple deployments, select the Kudu build server.
8. Select the repository and branch you want to use in your continuous deployment pipeline.
9. Azure will now retrieve your code, build it, and deploy it automatically.

CONCLUSION
The simplicity of the cloud makes it lightning fast to create and continuously deploy to a production environment. As a result:

1. Developers can focus on writing software that delivers value to users.
2. Designers can get their ideas into the hands of users sooner.
3. Product mangers can run experiments more often.

Combine these effects, and the whole team can prototype at the speed of light!