Continuous delivery and deployment can both be implemented in Azure DevOps by using releases. When creating a new release definition, an outline of the release process is created. This process will often start with an artifact that triggers the creation of a new release. Next, it is possible to define one or more stages that the release can be deployed to. Often, these stages correspond to the different application environments, for example, test and production, but this is not mandatory.

Let's learn how to create a new release definition and explore the various options we have. First, navigate to Pipelines and choose Releases from the menu. From here, it is possible to start creating a new release pipeline, which will take us to a screen that looks similar to the one shown in the following screenshot:

From the preceding screen, we can perform the following actions (these are numbered in the preceding screenshot):   

1. First, notice that, on the left, it is possible to see the outline of the release pipeline with a box. Here, you can select one or more artifacts that can be used in the release pipeline.
2. To the right of this, there is a box where the different stages of the release can be seen. By default, one stage is created already.
3. It is possible to pick a template as a starting point for the deployment pipeline for this pre-created stage. Choosing to start with an empty job in this view allows you to craft a custom deployment pipeline from scratch.

After choosing a job template or an empty job to start with, the pane on the right will close, and it will be possible to start editing the release pipeline from left to right, starting with the artifacts.  

Once a skeleton release pipeline is visible, the first things you will need to configure are the artifacts that the release should work with. This is the subject of the next section.