Agile Methodology and DevOps Relationship

15 February 2021

In today’s time of software, the development industry Agile and its complementary DevOps are two methodologies that are being used more and more by developers for developing the project efficiently and completing it on time with frequent releases. The concept of CI(Continuous Integration) and CD(continuous delivery) has gained value in the market. It has introduced a productive and effective way of software development.

Aiming to the frequent release of products in agile brings the challenge of deploying the latest changes rapidly and every now and again, without compromising the quality of the product. And here DevOps(Development+IT operations) get limelight by improving both production and development operations.

Agile and DevOps: An Overview

Agile is an iterative methodology of software development like waterfall. It emphasizes customer feedback, frequent releases of the product, and overall team collaboration. It

is majorly used for developing a complex project. Below are few methodologies which follow the agile model:

• Agile Scrum Methodology
• Kanban
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Crystal
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)

DevOps unites development and IT operations. It brings development and operations practices, tools technologies, and teams together  to build a high-quality software product with on-time delivery.

DevOps practices like CI(continuous integration) and CD(continuous deployment) helps in finding and fixing bugs quickly. It plays a supreme role in building a microservices

architecture.Devops team creates a whole complex system by wrapping up an individual piece of functionality in microservices.

How they differ?

Both Agile and DevOps aim for bringing end-user value by providing a high-quality software product with on-time delivery but from two different perspectives.

Agile is inclined towards software development practices and thus manages a complex project whereas DevOps manages the end-to-end engineering process.DevOps focuses on technical stuff for building, testing, and deploying software.

Agile is responsible till the software development life cycle completes which involves planning, development, testing, and deployment but DevOps is responsible for everything from planning to continuous development, testing, and integrating pieces. It is also responsible for continuously monitoring the performance of the application.

Agile focuses more on speed whereas DevOps focuses on speed as well as automation which helps in achieving accuracy with frequent and faster releases.

Agile and DevOps together

To get the two Agile and DevOps to work together it is necessary that the team has a wide skill set. They should have an understanding of all the aspects of software development. It needs team collaboration, understanding of major DevOps and automation tools and technologies, coding and scripting skills, knowledge of cloud that centralized platform to test, deploy, and release code, testing, and security skills like DevSecOps(Security DevOps).

The DevOps principle should be applied at the beginning of development as it streamlines the product services and its releases. DevOps and Agile integration leads to better collaboration and reduces risks in each release.

Selecting the right tool is yet an important aspect of the successful integration of agile and DevOps.

Agile ensures the quick delivery of products according to user needs whereas DevOps ensures its reliability and scalability. Integrating these two awesome and outstanding approaches increase value to the product and business.

Although both methodologies are slightly different our aim is to get the results faster for our customers by using these two to make the process efficient, cheaper and easy.