Agile vs DevOps

This blog discusses the concepts of DevOps and Agile methodologies in more detail. In this session, we are going to compare various approaches of DevOps and Agile that have been incorporated by many enterprises across the world. This blog mainly focuses on the topics which comprise DevOps and Agile, its advantages, differences, similarities, and other related concepts. Let’s begin by comprehending the terms of DevOps and Agile.

What is DevOps?

DevOps and Agile have significant variations. DevOps intends to provide more reliable interaction between the development team and the operations team. It doesn’t mean that it proffers a whole strategy for the implementation of the work as such. Instead, it expedites a better interchange of information and tools among the teams and overcomes the incompetence caused otherwise. DevOps also strives to engage automation in every process involved in software development, and we know that automation brings enhanced productivity and cost optimization to any corporation. 

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What is Agile?

Agile is one of the software development methodologies, which concentrates on various short-term development life cycles. Possessing short life cycles enhances the quality of a product. The feedback obtained from consumers is prioritized by the life cycle and permits us to make corresponding changes to the product quicker. Agile has a much smaller life cycle that makes it much more productive than its analogs. It makes the products more comfortable to test, obtain feedback faster, and apprehend the market early. 

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Differences Between DevOps and Agile

Even though both procedures promote collaboration to increase speed and efficiency, there are numerous variations while applying the method by which this goal is attained. The following are some critical differences in the Agile vs. DevOps conversation in terms of process, teams, focus and feedback, and tools.

Process: 
  • Speaking about the execution of particular tasks, with Agile, interaction among teams and consumers is consistent, necessitated changes are included continually throughout the production process to ensure quality. With DevOps, the focus is on constant testing and delivery, but the conversation is essentially between developers and IT operations. 
  • The Agile process is more suited for complex projects, while the DevOps method is more suitable for end-to-end processes.
Teams:

To tell about the team structure. More substantial teams tend to use DevOps, with the skill set distributed among team members within operations and development. Here, each team member has a particular task or set of tasks to finish throughout each level of the process. Agile is more suited for smaller teams to complete work faster. The Agile strategies will not typically prescribe a specific set of tasks to team members but instead inspires all members to share competencies equally. Due to this, all Agile team members can handle or assign any part of a project at any given time. 

Focus and Feedback:

When it comes to focusing and feedback, Agile and DevOps also vary. While DevOps projects tend to focus on operational and business readiness with most feedback acquired from internal team members, an Agile strategy typically gets the feedback directly from the customers. Concerning focus, Agile teams regularly implement sprints, with each sprint enduring less than a month. With sprints, the achieved tasks are completed following increments, as one sprint starts immediately when the previous sprint finishes. With DevOps, there are specific deadlines to meet and standards to achieve, some of which can occur daily.

Tools:

Both Agile and DevOps tend to use various tools, depending on the project. The popular project-management tools in Agile include Kanboard and Jira project management software and Bugzilla server software. DevOps uses tools like AWS cloud computing services, Puppet automation software, TeamCity servers, OpenStack software, and Chef infrastructure.

Implementation:

DevOps focuses more on collaboration without having any common framework. It combines all the areas of an enterprise, like operations, development, and testing departments. But Agile applies some tactical frameworks like Scrum. It helps entities speed up their software delivery and enhances productivity.

Time for delivery:

DevOps aims to send code to production every few hours, but Agile works faster, like a sprint. Agile needs its team to be more productive, and it offers a shorter development cycle. DevOps also does so with an automation process. 

Importance:

In DevOps, building, testing, and applying all are given much importance. It is because it works faster and delivers software solutions on time. But Agile mainly focuses on software development as a primary goal. It doesn't focus on other areas like building, testing, etc., as DevOps does. 

Quality Work:

DevOps helps to deliver a better quality product with automation by early clearance of bugs. It focuses on faster product delivery with accuracy and contributes to a better quality product. Agile also produces better apps as per need by adapting to the changes much faster. It contains several application suites with required solutions. 

Automation:

Automation is the primary aim of DevOps, so it enhances efficiency. Therefore, it reduces human efforts to execute tasks much faster. But Agile doesn't rely much on the automation process. Using automation can allow QAs to speed up test case creation to run automatically and push the code. 

Management:

DevOps manages entire engineering processes, but Agile manages more complex projects. Also, DevOps enables IT teams to deploy products more rapidly. Dev and Ops team collaboration allows code deployment to production much faster. Agile breaks the process into small parts and combines them for final testing. 

The DevOps Three Ways:

Understanding The System

The machine-level thinking is that software apps are very complex to understand. They need many skills and experience to understand the complexity.

Boosting Feedback Loops

DevOps improves the two-way communication between different teams across the organization.

Changes in the work culture

It helps the production work with continuous experimentation and learning of new processes.

The four Agile values

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation.
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
  • Responding to change over following a plan.

Advantages of DevOps

1. Ensure faster deployment

Implementation of DevOps ensures faster time to market and delivers products on time, increasing ROI for the business. Cross-functional teams can work collaboratively and can provide solutions much faster. 

2. Stabilize work environment

It balances the workplace by improving the processes across all departments. Different teams can work together, reduce workload stress, and save time.

3. Significant improvement in product quality

DevOps helps improve product quality by continuously automating the product delivery process. Thus, teams work much more thoughtfully, deliver good quality products to customers, and get quick feedback.

4. Automation in monotonous tasks leaves more space for innovation

Automating the various processes saves much time for the team. It helps them to focus on new developments and changes innovatively.

5. Promotes agility in your business

To achieve agility, you must balance the rapid development process, speed, and sequence. It would be best if you also had enhanced reliability with reduced disruption.

6. Continuous delivery of software

DevOps helps continuously develop, test, and deliver new software code improvements using automation tools. 

7. Fast and reliable problem-solving techniques

Improving the faster time to market, software quality, enhancing customer satisfaction, and minimizing lifecycle with automation are the major issues that DevOps addresses. It provides more rapid and more reliable solutions to these issues. 

8. Transparency leads to high productivity.

DevOps ensures faster production, reduces errors, and enhances the automation process more transparently. It leads to higher productivity and excellent performance.

9. Minimal cost of production

Automating processes with agility, observing lifecycle performance, timely execution of strategies and product delivery, reducing repetitive work, etc., reduces the cost of production in any business. Thus, DevOps helps very well in reducing time and higher production costs.

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Advantages of Agile

1. Satisfied customers

Agile offers complete customer satisfaction by developing necessary products that suit the customers. They also take feedback from the stakeholders and customers to make necessary improvements. It leaves customers highly satisfied.

2. Improved Quality 

Agile methodologies use an iterative approach that repeatedly improves processes at specific intervals. It continuously focuses on the improvement and Quality of the final product, which helps to deliver superior products.

3. Adaptability

AgileAgile'sible nature allows the teams to adapt to any change that aligns with the updated goal. All the project deliverables may not comply with the needs or differences. So couples must adjust their work and plans with the change to give quality output.

4. Predictability 

The Agile team works by simplifying the estimation of costs. They predict the costs for a shorter time and work in a brief period. It also makes it easier for project managers to assess the team's performance and assign resources. 

5. Reduced risk

Developers continuously observe the process with better visibility. They also identify the potential errors and resolve them earlier. So, it reduces the risk and improves the chance of product success.

6.Better communication

By regular interaction with each other, the Agile teams make sure that everyone is on the same page. They eliminate the confusion in the process and help deliver the final product without issues.

Agile Principles

There are some principles mentioned in the Agile manifesto that says:-

  • It ensures customer satisfaction through faster and continuous delivery of valuable software solutions.
  • Agile welcomes all the necessary changes that come in, even if it gets late in development. 
  • Break the extensive size work into smaller sections for quick completion. 
  • Delivers working software frequently by giving preference to the shorter timescale.
  • It requires business people and developers to work together on the entire project to make it successful.
  • Agile focuses on providing motivated individuals with the support and work environment they need and trusting them to complete the task.
  • Enhances face-to-face communication for better results of work.
  • Delivering the working software is the primary progress measure.
  • Creates processes that promote sustainable development of software.
  • Continuous focus on technical excellence along with good design improves agility.
  • Measuring work progress by the volume of completed work.
  • The best architectures, needs, and designs result from self-organized teams. 

Common similarities between DevOps and Agile

  • Agile and DevOps both target speed, efficiency, and quality results throughout the software development lifecycle. They also concentrate on shorter release cycles. Both these methodologies will not focus much on documentation levels and instead consume more time on automation and collaboration. 
  • As projects progress, the risk level reduces while practicing Agile or DevOps models, whereas risk rises over time with other models as the waterfall.
  • When new marketing needs arise, Agile and DevOps approaches prepare corporations to be greatly responsive by inscribing marketing needs immediately. Firms that use either strategy also typically have more established ownership of their respective projects.

Do Agile and DevOps can be practiced together?

It's not necessary to commit to one approach over another. Practicing the combination of both methodologies can increase efficiency. Both these methodologies have significant roles to play with software development and deployment, and one can be used to enable the other.

Measuring speed and risk

Teams that implement Agile with or without using DevOps need to remember that the basis for adopting the change should be proficient. The team must possess profound knowledge and precise comprehension of the framework and organize them as part of their software development. 

Speaking from the DevOps perspective, the team must assure that the newly incorporated changes must not let any risk pass in. Also, the team has to ensure unseen or transparent changes should not exist, as DevOps is a continuous process and there is scope for numerous changes on board.

Therefore, when implementing DevOps, the team must possess a clear idea of the existing risk with every change being implemented.  

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Agenda for ensuring Quality

The agenda for implementing both Agile and DevOps is to help improve the work efficiency, deliver enhanced applications that are independent of risk. Quality is a critical factor for any business. 

Agile produces applications that fit better with the essential requirements and can adapt those changes to respond quickly. Agile designs a workflow that can be adopted as per the changing necessities of the project.DevOps can assist to disclose early bugs and fix it for having improved quality software. Developers have to implement the best coding practices to achieve the expected quality.

Agile and DevOps need to stretch their limits to connect the gaps and to prove efficient. To accomplish this they must adopt the practices and principles of implementing Agile and DevOps practices, for more accelerated development and deliver refined quality software with reduced risks.

Impact of DevOps and Agile on the Corporations

Several prominent industries like Walmart, Amazon, Sony, Netflix, etc. practice DevOps to automate all of their processes and build more reliable and smarter products. Even startups, both big and small enterprises like Flipkart, Ola, Grofers, and others, have commenced adopting the DevOps culture into the whole life cycle to enhance the product's quality.

It is hard for a prospered comprehensive corporation to migrate to the Agile methodology, where there are diverse teams already existing for different roles. But if done, it can produce advantages as examined and proven by British Telecoms, National Bank of Canada, Lego, and many others

Conclusion

DevOps cannot be removed or replaced by Agile, both DevOps and Agile methodologies compete with each other. The implementation methodologies reduce the time to execute and streamline the process such that an application moves quickly from deployment to the production area. Enterprises practicing the Agile model implements the process of automated testing and delivers by extending their outlines until the enclosing area. Therefore, both Agile and DevOps don’t stretch their limits, thus enduring in their province. 

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Saritha Reddy
Saritha Reddy
Research Analyst
A technical lead content writer in HKR Trainings with an expertise in delivering content on the market demanding technologies like Networking, Storage & Virtualization,Cyber Security & SIEM Tools, Server Administration, Operating System & Administration, IAM Tools, Cloud Computing, etc. She does a great job in creating wonderful content for the users and always keeps updated with the latest trends in the market. To know more information connect her on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook.