How many times have you deployed something to production thinking, “This code is perfect—what could possibly go wrong?” Then, the next morning, your leadership is swarming around your desk because production is down? Or maybe a client hands you their code and expects it to “just work” without a proper lower environment?

Production issues happen to all of us—and to me, more times than I’d like to admit. The key to avoiding them starts long before deployment. Quality begins in a developer’s local environment.

In this session, we’ll explore how tools like Docker, Postman, and Azure DevOps can raise the quality of your software from the very first line of code. You’ll learn how to use these tools to improve testing, streamline workflows, and increase both your team’s confidence and leadership’s trust when it’s time to push to production.

Key takeaways:

How Docker can make local environments more reliable and production-like

Using Postman to ensure APIs behave before they go live

Leveraging Azure DevOps for automated testing, CI/CD, and quality gates

Practical strategies to reduce “surprise” production issues