Deploying Windows 11 within an enterprise environment should be carefully planned so the delivery has every chance to succeed. This is especially applicable when faced with choosing from numerous tools and methods.

Technologies evolve and modernize, so your deployment process should evolve too. You should follow best practices and current guidance to utilize the productivity advancements to ensure that your deployment is delivered with minimal issues and delivered on schedule.

Windows 11 is released using a continuous delivery model known as Windows as a Service, with a new version of Windows 11 available annually. Therefore, the skills you learn in deploying Windows 11 to your users will be reused again and often.

It is recommended that administrators choose a group of users and deploy Windows 11 into focused pilot projects to test each version of Windows 11 within their organizations before rolling out the operating system to larger cohorts of users.

You must explore each of the available deployment options. These options include technology such as Windows Autopilot, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), or Configuration Manager that might be currently used within your organization.

Table 1-1 lists many different methods to deploy and configure Windows 11. You need to understand when to use each deployment method.

TABLE 1-1 Methods for deploying and configuring Windows

Deployment using dynamic provisioning

Dynamic provisioning uses modern tools, including mobile device management solutions, to deploy devices. Many of these options were unavailable when deploying previous Windows versions using traditional deployment methods. Table 1-2 compares modern dynamic provisioning and traditional deployment methods, which can also incorporate image creation.

TABLE 1-2 Provisioning methods

The deployment choices available to an organization might be skewed by its investment in traditional deployment methods and infrastructure. This might include reliance upon on-premises tools and procedures, such as Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) and Endpoint Configuration Manager. These tools continue to be supported and can be used to support on-premises deployment methods, such as bare metal, refresh, and replace scenarios. You should understand the modern alternatives to the traditional on-premises methods.

Deploying Windows 11 using modern cloud-based deployment and dynamic provisioning methods includes using subscription activation, Windows Autopilot, and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) join. Ongoing management of Windows 11 is then undertaken using Mobile Device Management (MDM), such as Microsoft Intune.