Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations standardizes the development application life cycle by providing build automation out the box using Azure DevOps. Irrespective of cloud VMs or downloaded VMs for on-premises development environments, you can use the build machine in the cloud Build VM to automate the build and deployment process. 

When a Build VM is deployed in developer topology through LCS, it is preconfigured and ready to start a build. You can change the default configuration at any time from the Visual Studio IDE or the Azure DevOps interface. The build machine is also auto-configured with default settings for the build agent, build controller, build process template, and build definition. Tests that are integrated with the build definition are executed after the build is successful. Technically, you can turn your downloaded on-premises VM into a build machine but you have to do all the setup manually.

The following screenshot shows a build definition and configuration that's been deployed on an Azure DevOps account after deploying the build machine:

As shown in the preceding screenshot, the default build definition contains all the standard steps that you need to build solutions, including generating deployable packages. You can use this standard build definition to create builds right away or customize them as per your specific needs. Automated build definitions can also discover and execute all unit tests and automated UI tests if you have them.

If you are a customer and using an ISV solution for your implementation project, your ISV will provide their solution model. You can simply add their source code in Azure DevOps source control and the build process will pick up those models and build the final deployable package.