This article outlines six core principles for developing robust and maintainable Azure pipelines. The author, Paul Gradie, highlights the importance of decoupling build processes from deployment processes to improve efficiency and speed. He also emphasises designing pipelines at the job level to ensure clarity and maintainability.

Furthermore, Gradie advocates for the use of templates as functions to encapsulate logical groupings of behaviours within pipelines, promoting reusability and readability. The article explores the distinction between intrinsic and non-intrinsic values when parameterising templates, suggesting that behaviours should be intrinsic to templates while details should be parameterised. It also stresses the importance of parameterising values likely to change to avoid hard-coding and potential maintenance issues.

Finally, the author discusses the use of a global variable template as a convenient way to access common variables across multiple pipelines, while acknowledging the need for careful consideration to maintain transparency and avoid introducing "magic" into the pipelines.