The modern world is paving the way for advanced software development practices—making it crucial to know Agile vs. DevOps and their difference. The latter’s methodology facilitates collaboration between development and operations teams, while the former’s methodology improves development efficiency.
Although Agile and DevOps have many notable differences, they share many similarities as well. Detailed comparisons and contrasts between Agile and DevOps are presented in this article, as well as the relationship between the two.
What is Agile?
As part of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process, Agile methodology includes continuous iterations of development and testing. An iterative, incremental, and evolutionary approach is emphasized in this method of software development.
As part of Agile’s development process, the product is broken down into smaller pieces and integrated for final testing. It may be implemented in many different ways, including scrum, kanban, XP, etc.
The following four core values of the Agile software development process, which include:
1. Individuals and Interactions Over Processes and Tools
According to the Agile Manifesto, people are more important than processes. Several organizations emphasize acquiring the best possible tools for building their software more than anything else. However, even the best tools would be useless in the hands of the wrong people.
To cultivate a healthy work environment and deal with problems on an as-needed basis, it is essential to have a competent team of individuals and to encourage them to communicate and collaborate.
2. Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation
Despite its importance, documentation should not take center stage. This process was a common practice among many software teams in the past. In the Agile Manifesto, the greatest priority should be to deliver software to consumers rather than spend too much time documenting—instead of writing code and building the software.
3. Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation
Historically, contracts were of great importance, and a lot of effort and consideration was put into writing and negotiating them. Most of the time, these situations have led to miscommunication, as the contract stipulates one thing and the product ends up being something different, while the customer has different requirements altogether.
It is the Agile Manifesto’s belief that continuous development and continuous collaboration with customers are the keys to success.
4. Responding to Change Over Following a Plan
Our world is dynamic, and customers’ needs, preferences, and priorities shift rapidly over time. It is, therefore, crucial that software teams maintain a flexible and adaptable approach now more than ever.
According to the Agile Manifesto, it is important to embrace, accept, and incorporate changes mid-project in order to benefit the overall project. As opposed to following a rigid plan blindly, agile teams are highly tolerant of being able to change direction midway.
What is DevOps?
To facilitate the rapid deployment of products, DevOps focuses on communication, integration, and collaboration among IT professionals. A DevOps culture encourages collaboration between development and operations teams.
In this way, code can be deployed to production more quickly and automatically. Using it increases the speed at which applications and services are delivered within an organization. In other words, it refers to the alignment between development and IT operations.
How Do Agile and DevOps Resemble and Differ?
- A key aspect of Agile is the collaboration between developers and product managers. However, DevOps includes the operations team as well.
- Agile centers software flow from ideation to code completion. Meanwhile, DevOps adds delivery and maintenance to the mix.
- The Agile approach emphasizes iterative development and small batches, while DevOps emphasizes automated delivery and testing.
- Developers benefit from agile by adding structure to their planned work, whereas DevOps encompasses unplanned work common to operations teams as well.
People and interactions are explicitly prioritized in the Agile Manifesto. Working software, collaborating with customers, and responding to change are also explicitly prioritized. DevOps clearly extends these priorities beyond development to managing systems and running applications as well.
How Do Agile and DevOps Work Together?
The concept of DevOps can be viewed as an evolution of agile practices or as a missing component of Agile. Basically, it’s about integrating its innovations and applying them to operations processes. Additionally, it’s a missing piece of Agile because certain principles can only be fully realized through the application of DevOps practices.
For instance, the continuous delivery of software is mentioned multiple times in Agile documents, but continuous delivery is commonly referred to as a DevOps practice because delivery pipelines encompass operations concerns. It is imperative that teams communicate more effectively across and between them in order to boost feedback loops.
Through its daily standups, planning meetings, and retrospectives, agile, specifically scrum, facilitates this communication. There is a common mindset between Agile and DevOps practitioners. Furthermore, their goals are aligned as well.
A DevOps transition aims to fully automate the deployment of working code into the production environment. In this way, DevOps has reached its full potential. Additionally, the Agile manifesto makes it clear that continuous delivery of software to clients is the highest priority.
The main idea behind DevOps and Agile is to get working software into the hands of clients so that they can build software, ensure transparency, and promote sustainable development—and get software into clients’ hands as quickly as possible by using modern tools and processes.
DevOps with an Agile Approach is the Way to Go!
It makes no sense to talk about agile without mentioning DevOps because the goals are similar: to improve the quality and speed of software development. Several teams have found agile methodologies to be extremely helpful, while others have had difficulty realizing the benefits.
Continuous delivery of high-quality products and services is made possible by the integration of software development and IT operations with DevOps. In agile, small changes are enabled as per the client’s requirements in a fast and efficient manner.
A company can benefit from exponential growth in terms of revenue and customer experience by merging DevOps and Agile for their custom app development.
If you need help with custom app development, we are able to provide you with the best solutions by analyzing and understanding your business needs. For more information about our services, call us at 888-531-9995 at Laminar Consulting Service today!
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