Managed vs Unmanaged
Unmanaged: edit anything, solution is a grouping. Managed: installed as a unit, fields/tables can’t be edited. Ship managed to production.
Solution Layering
Multiple managed solutions layer on top of each other. Conflicts resolve by layer order. Plan layering — hotfix layer above everything, customer-specific layer at the top.
Azure DevOps Pipelines
Power Platform Build Tools provide tasks: export solution, pack, unpack, publish, import. Git-tracked solution zip is the deliverable. Fully automatable.
Git + Source Tree
pac solution unpack exposes solution as a file tree. Diff is readable. Pull requests on Dataverse customization become realistic.
Staging Environments
Dev → Test → Staging → Prod. Each environment has a distinct purpose. Don’t conflate dev and staging; you’ll regret it.