Introduction
Recently Agile and DevOps have become the talk of the whole app development world. There are lots of articles and dozens of guides, but we’ve received tons of questions like “What is the difference between Agile and DevOps?”, etc. And we decided to write an article disclosing the following topic.
Fast Agile and thoroughly-planned DevOps are the two sides of a single coin. However, they are not the same. Though it may look like Agile and DevOps are different, it’s quite irrelevant to compare apples and oranges.
Using DevOps and Agile in tandem is often the best approach to streamline development process within a team, department or even an entire company. Merging both theories helps to become more flexible to constant changes in the app development world. Let’s dive deep and find out if Agile and DevOps are enemies or friends.
What Is Agile?
Agile is rather a group of software development methodologies that help teams provide instant and unpredictable responses to the feedback they get on the project. Taking advantage of sprints (set periods of time required to build a part of the software), Agile allows developers to stay flexible and quickly change their direction during the project.
Agile has a wide range of implementation ways not to mention Scrum, Kanban, eXtreme Programming, etc.
Four Values of Agile
What Is DevOps?
DevOps isn’t a tool or a product like some of you may mistakenly think. DevOps is rather a set of approaches that allow automatization of the software delivery. While Agile was a response to Waterfall, but DevOps isn’t a response to Agile.
DevOps mixes principles of Agile, automation, and continuous delivery to streamline the software delivery process. The key point of DevOps is to deliver software solutions to business units on time and ensure proper work of the software.
Three Principles of DevOps
Differences between Agile and DevOps
Agile |
DevOps |
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What is it? |
Agile is a set of methodologies used to streamline the development process. As a rule, Agile is all about development but not deployment. |
DevOps is all about deploying the software once it is ready. DevOps can be used with any development methodology be it Agile or Waterfall. |
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Purpose |
Agile is used to manage complex development processes. |
DevOps helps to deliver and deploy end-to-end software solutions. |
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Goal |
Agile focus on quick changes. |
DevOps focuses on testing and delivery. |
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Team |
Team members can do every job on the team. An available team member is capable of doing what’s required for progress. |
DevOps implies dividing duties between development and operational teams. No one can hop between teams. |
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Communication |
Agile often uses Scrum to simplify the development process. Scrum involves daily meetings where team members share their progress and plan further work. |
While Agile doesn’t require any documentation, DevOps can’t get along without specs as well as design documents. It’s vital for a successful product delivery. But such communication doesn’t require daily meetings. |
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Scheduling |
The team sets a sprint, a time in the near future (usually a month) and sets features to be created within this sprint. |
DevOps sets a schedule for software deployment to minimize any business risks associated. |
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Documentation |
Agile prioritizes working software over completing documentation. This allows developers to become flexible and responsive. |
DevOps requires proper documentation to transfer to other teams all knowledge required to deploy apps. |
Summary
Agile doesn’t spur DevOps. Both are rather cultural movements that can inspire your organization and provide better means for achieving your goals. Agile promotes small and quick changes to the project. And DevOps brings balancing stability to the app development project.
Agile and DevOps work better in tandem than as separate units. Agile is all about development and DevOps is all about deployment. At IDAP, we have experimented with how working with Agile and DevOps can boost up the development process, and today we’re fully Agile company taking advantage of DevOps as well.
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