What is the Difference Between DevOps and Agile?

All facets of software development are made more efficient and predictable by the complementary techniques of DevOps and Agile methodology. The agile methodology is an iterative approach to software development that prioritises user feedback, quick software releases, and teamwork. It’s a management and culture philosophy that seeks to instil in each team member a commitment to value delivery to consumers and ongoing improvement. A software delivery methodology called DevOps breaks down the divisions that now exist between development and operations teams. Teams working in DevOps leverage techniques and tools to automate manual, slow activities like provisioning infrastructure or deploying code. The speed at which an organisation may provide services and apps is improved by these methods and tools. Check out the online DevOps course to learn more.

What are the similarities between agile methodology and DevOps?

The constraints of conventional, more inflexible software development approaches gave rise to the agile methodology in 2000. Its fundamental beliefs, tenets, and procedures were delineated in the 2001 publication titled “Manifesto for Agile Software Development.” Agile development methodologies prioritise iterative development, continuous delivery, quick change, and customer collaboration.

Agile methodologies served as the foundation for DevOps, which emerged from the necessity for more collaboration between the development and operations teams. DevOps was first used in 2009 by Patrick Debois. Debois extended the concepts of agile methods to encompass automation and operations. Agile methods are strengthened by DevOps, which offers new areas of concentration. 

We next go over some further similarities between agile and DevOps practices.

Objectives

The goal of both agile and DevOps methodologies is to enhance the software development and delivery process. They also encourage teamwork, effectiveness, and ongoing development. Both of them take advantage of cross-functional cooperation to give feedback loops and enhance work over time. Lean concepts are applied both to optimise and streamline operations.

Teams are encouraged to implement improvements, collaborate, and remove bottlenecks by using DevOps and agile approaches. This makes it possible for both approaches to increase software development pace without sacrificing quality.

Quality assurance

Testing is emphasised in both Agile and DevOps methodologies to guarantee software stability. Both concentrate on testing code modifications to find problems as soon as possible. Common test types include unit tests, functional tests, performance tests, acceptance tests, and integration tests.

Throughout the development process, agile and DevOps teams may produce dependable, high-calibre software by emphasising frequent code testing. 

Continuous improvement

DevOps and agile methodologies encourage a culture of growth, learning, improved procedures, and advancement. Iteratively making little adjustments, teams enhance a product. 

Retrospectives and other Scrum practices are used by the agile approach to support the development of an improvement culture. For example, a team reviews its performance at the end of each iteration and considers areas for improvement. They pinpoint future initiatives to boost output, client happiness, and teamwork.

In a similar vein, DevOps teams identify opportunities for improvement by tracking data and doing post-incident evaluations.

Key differences: Agile practices vs. DevOps

Agile methods and DevOps are complementary methods for delivering software. They focus on unique ideas and methods to address client needs uniquely.

Purpose

Software development in small steps is the main goal of the agile methodology. It motivates groups to work together with clients, provide value, and adapt swiftly to changes. Agile approaches are used by teams in software development to effectively adapt to changing market demands and client needs.

Operations teams within the agile software development culture are included in DevOps. Delivering and deploying the program to end users is the responsibility of operations. If there are frequent modifications to the program, the operations team must also adapt. They have to handle changes in the software environment setup, which is harder as the application grows in size

The goal of DevOps is to eliminate silos and emphasise cooperation between the development and operations teams. Software deployment is more flexible and efficient when using a variety of techniques and technologies.

Principles

The four primary tenets, or priorities, of the agile approach, are as follows:

• People and their interactions with procedures and equipment
• Functional software as opposed to thorough documentation
• Client cooperation as opposed to contract drafting
• Adaptation as opposed to strict adherence to a plan

Throughout the course of a project, agile teams embrace change and provide incremental and iterative development. They include clients at the outset and all the way through, which makes it easier for teams to adapt to requirements from clients.

In comparison, the abbreviation CALMS encapsulates the five primary tenets of DevOps:

• Collaboration between development and operations teams for shared responsibility
• Automation tools and techniques to automate repetitive tasks, reduce errors, and increase efficiency
• Lean strategy to eliminate any processes that increase the time to delivery
• Measurement of performance by collecting and analysing data
• Sharing information and learnings across teams to improve overall performance and innovation

Practices

Using the agile methodology, tasks are divided into smaller components known as stories. An agile team will operate in sprints, which are brief intervals of iteration. A new, shippable increment of the software or product is created throughout each sprint. To coordinate, team members take part in daily stand-up meetings. Similar to this, the agile methodology looks for efficiency through a variety of frequent retrospectives.

To the greatest extent feasible, DevOps automates the construction, testing, and deployment processes. This is in favour of new software versions being released frequently. Code is combined into a single repository through continuous integration, which makes sure developers test their work frequently. Deployment pipelines are used in continuous delivery to deploy to several environments simultaneously. 

Infrastructure as code, or IaC, is another tool used by DevOps to enable teams to treat provisioning and management like software development activities. By keeping an eye on apps and infrastructure, developers can identify possible problems and troubleshoot them to make improvements.

Skills

Members of an agile team must be flexible, adaptive, and skilled communicators. In order to finish a project, the majority of team members may work across many domains and possess cross-functional abilities. Agile teams need to be able to give and receive feedback efficiently, therefore communication is essential.

Teams working in DevOps need to have expertise in operations, automation, security awareness, and monitoring. Members of the DevOps team provide tools for pipeline monitoring and produce IaC scripts. DevOps depends on maintaining

Teams working in DevOps need to grasp software deployment automation on a more technical level. Non-technical members of agile teams include project managers and business analysts.

How do DevOps and agile methodologies work together?

When combined with the operations teams used by DevOps, the collaborative nature of the agile process is further enhanced. Agile teams collaborate to create software, which DevOps subsequently delivers to the customer. Software increments are provided by agile developers, which DevOps combines and deploys via automation and continuous delivery. Writing software testing and managing the build and deployment pipeline are under the purview of developers.

Conclusion To learn more about DevOps and how it works, check out the DevOps online training.