About This Study Plan

This 30-day study plan breaks the AZ-400 (Azure DevOps Engineer Expert) exam preparation into 4 focused study sessions with a total of 8 actionable tasks. The plan covers all 5 exam domains — Design and Implement Processes and Communications, Design and Implement a Source Control Strategy, Design and Implement Build and Release Pipelines, Develop a Security and Compliance Plan, Implement an Instrumentation Strategy — ensuring complete coverage of the exam blueprint. A balanced plan with hands-on pipeline labs for thorough AZ-400 preparation.

4Study Sessions

8Total Tasks

5Domains Covered

Prerequisites

Basic CI/CD knowledge
1-2 hours of study time per day

Study Schedule

Week 1Source Control & Collaboration

Study branching strategies and Azure DevOps/GitHub configuration.
Practice pull request policies and work item tracking.

Week 2CI/CD Pipelines

Build multi-stage YAML pipelines with templates.
Implement GitHub Actions workflows with environments.

Week 3Security, Containers & IaC

Implement DevSecOps scanning and container strategies.
Deploy infrastructure with Bicep/Terraform in pipelines.

Week 4Release, Monitoring & Review

Design release strategies and monitoring architectures.
Take mock exams and review all domains.

Study Tips

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Set up a personal Azure DevOps org for practice.

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Review DORA metrics and SRE principles.

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Practice with both Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions.

Recommended Azure Study Resources

Supplement this study plan with Microsoft Learn's free AZ-400 learning path, which provides interactive modules and sandboxed Azure environments. The Microsoft Virtual Training Days programme also offers free instructor-led sessions with a 50% exam discount voucher upon completion.