Philippe Didiergeorges delivers a thorough migration playbook for moving from Azure DevOps to GitHub, demonstrating how to combine both platforms while unlocking AI-driven developer productivity with GitHub Copilot.

Azure DevOps to GitHub Migration Playbook: Unlocking Agentic DevOps

By Philippe Didiergeorges

Overview

In today’s Microsoft ecosystem, Azure DevOps and GitHub Enterprise both offer robust SDLC platforms. This playbook guides you through a migration strategy that leverages the best of both: maintaining enterprise features from Azure DevOps and harnessing GitHub’s AI and open-source strengths, especially with GitHub Copilot.

Why Consider Migration?

Azure DevOps offers advanced enterprise features:

  • Azure Boards for project management
  • Azure Pipelines for build and release automation
  • Azure Test Plans for quality and tracking

GitHub Enterprise stands out with:

  • AI-native development platform features
  • GitHub Copilot for AI-powered coding, reviews, and automation
  • GitHub Actions for flexible CI/CD
  • Advanced Security and rich app integrations

Hybrid Approach: Move source code to GitHub to leverage AI, while retaining Azure Boards and Pipelines. With unified Microsoft licensing, users can seamlessly access both platforms.

Migration Prerequisites

  • Access to both Azure DevOps and GitHub from your machine
  • Administrator rights and proper permissions on both platforms
  • Personal Access Tokens (PAT) for authentication on Azure DevOps and GitHub
  • Installation of GitHub CLI and the azdo2gh extension

Step-by-Step Migration

1. Set Environment Variables

$env:ADO_PAT="YOUR_AZURE_DEVOPS_PAT"
$env:GH_PAT="YOUR_GITHUB_PAT"

2. Install Azure Pipelines Application on GitHub

3. Organization Inventory

  • Generate inventory using the extension:
gh ado2gh inventory-report --ado-org <your-org>
  • Review generated CSVs for orgs, pipelines, repos, and projects.

4. Migration Script Generation

gh ado2gh generate-script \
  --ado-org <your-org> \
  --ado-team-project <project> \
  --github-org <org> \
  --all
  • Customization options include repository selection, naming conventions, team roles, and more.

5. Analyze and Customize the Script

  • Ensure environment variables are set
  • Verify Azure Pipelines application is installed
  • Adjust repository/team names to match conventions
  • Use GitHub Copilot for batch modifications if desired

6. Execute the Migration Script

.\migrate.ps1
  • Monitors migration progress, preserves commit history, branches, tags, and PR metadata
  • Error handling ensures continued progress even if some repositories fail

Post-Migration Steps

7. Manage “Mannequins” (Unmapped Users)

  • Extract mannequin list, update with actual usernames, and trigger the remapping process

8. Update Teams and Communications

  • Inform teams of new repository locations and update procedures
  • Instructions for updating local remotes:
cd path/to/your/repo
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/YOUR_ORG/YOUR_REPO.git
git remote -v

9. Validation and Testing

  • Test workflows, pipelines, code reviews, and access
  • Explore new features like Copilot, Advanced Security, and validate pipeline integrations

Key Takeaways

  • Hybrid strategy enables use of both Azure DevOps’ robust tracking and GitHub’s AI-powered capabilities
  • Preparation and communication are critical for a smooth migration
  • Unified licensing between platforms reduces friction and cost
  • Automation ensures a reliable and auditable migration process

Resources and Further Reading

Happy coding with GitHub Copilot and your new hybrid DevOps platform!

This post appeared first on “Microsoft All Things Azure Blog”. Read the entire article here