Agile vs. DevOps : Know the Differences and Similarities
The War of the Worlds
As a software development professional, you might have heard the terms “agile” and “devops.” These two concepts seem to be related in some way but are not exactly the same thing. Let’s explore how they’re different and why they can work together to improve your software development process.
Agile is a set of principles and practices that guide software teams as they build their project toward delivery. Agile emphasizes short iterations, prioritizing customer satisfaction over feature completeness, frequent code check-ins, and team collaboration.
A Brief History
Agile was born in 2001 and has since been adopted by many organizations. Agile was created to help software developers build better software, while DevOps was created by 17 people in 2009 to make their company more efficient. The two terms have been used interchangeably in recent years because they have similar goals: both aim to increase productivity, decrease waste and create better products for customers using new technologies like automation and AI.
DevOps vs. Agile
DevOps and Agile are similar in that they both emphasize the importance of collaboration between development and operations teams. The main difference is that DevOps is a way of thinking, whereas Agile is more of a way of working. DevOps is also focused on specific practices, whereas Agile is focused on principles that guide the team’s decision-making processes.
The key point here is that there are many ways to achieve success with either DevOps or agile methods; however, it’s important for organizations to understand exactly what each method entails before adopting them into their software development process.
DevOps is the Next Step in Agile’s Evolution
While agile and DevOps are often seen as competitive, they’re actually complementary. They both focus on continuous improvement, collaboration and speed (we covered the first two points in the previous section). Both also focus on automation.
DevOps is the next step in your journey with Agile. DevOps takes Agile principles and approaches to their natural conclusion, integrating people and technology into an effective whole.
DevOps isn’t just for IT; it’s a culture that can be applied across your entire organization, including product management, marketing and sales teams — even finance. That’s because DevOps doesn’t just focus on technology — it also focuses on culture: quality assurance (QA), training and knowledge sharing. This includes encouraging collaboration between different functional groups within your organization so that they can all work together toward a common goal of providing value to end customers.
When it comes to DevOps vs. Agile, don’t focus too much on the differences and similarities between them. Instead, view DevOps as the next step in your journey with Agile.
When it comes to DevOps vs. Agile, don’t focus too much on the differences and similarities between them. Instead, view DevOps as the next step in your journey with Agile.
With that in mind, here are a few key similarities and differences between DevOps and Agile:
- Both approaches are iterative
- With each iteration, you get feedback from your users/customers so that you can improve future iterations based on their needs
- You should have a high degree of transparency across all stages of the development process
Summary
DevOps is not a replacement for Agile, but rather a complement to it. DevOps is an approach to scaling Agile that cultivates an environment where teams can work collaboratively and efficiently. In order to accomplish this, organizations must shift left, monitor their agility and move faster than ever before. With the help of DevOps practices and tools like Docker containers and Jenkins CI/CD pipelines, organizations are able to scale agility in their business models.
DevOps is a set of processes and tools that help teams work together to deliver software. It’s important to recognize that DevOps does not replace Agile, but rather complements it.
DevOps promotes communication and collaboration between software developers, quality assurance engineers, and information technology (IT) operations professionals. It’s focused on delivering better outcomes for the organization through improved efficiency in development practices, maintenance of quality assurance practices, faster recovery from incidents like downtime or security breaches (which often result from siloed teams), common toolsets across the entire team…the list goes on!