DevOps vs Agile: what’s the difference and how are they related?

You must have heard something about Agile and DevOps, two development methodologies with similar aims: getting the end product out as quickly and efficiently as possible. While many organizations are eager to employ these practices, there is often some confusion between the two. What does each methodology encompass? Can they work together, or should you choose one over the other? Since Corewide provides DevOps as a service and deals with Agile more often than not, we’d like to compare these two philosophies to broaden your perspective.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a combination of the development and operations of the term, meant to represent a collaborative or shared approach to the tasks performed by a company’s application development and IT operations teams. In its broadest meaning, DevOps is a philosophy that promotes better communication and collaboration between these teams — and others — in an organization. You can find more detailed information in our DevOps without technical background article.

What is Agile?

Agile is an iterative approach that encourages collaboration, organization, and feedback as a means of completing projects faster and more efficiently. It is typically used on the project management side of software development to ensure that all team members accomplish tasks quickly without sacrificing quality. The Agile methodology is carried out using smaller teams and segments, with continuous testing and changes made as needed based on immediate customer feedback. In doing so, Agile aims to right the challenges faced by the traditional Waterfall approach of delivering large products over long periods, during which customer requirements frequently changed, resulting in the wrong products being delivered.

What are the differences between DevOps and Agile?

Although both approaches encourage collaboration to improve speed and efficiency, there are several differences when it comes to the method by which this goal is achieved. Here are some critical differences in the Agile vs. DevOps discussion.

Philosophy and focus

Rooted instability, consistency, and planning, the DevOps culture seeks to identify new ways to improve and streamline processes. As a result, DevOps focuses on maximizing efficiency, identifying programmable processes, and increasing automation. The fail-fast mindset of Agile centers around adaptability and keeping pace with customer needs and expectations. Features are described as user stories, focusing on the individual user, what he or she needs, and why.

Scope

DevOps represents the intersections of development, operations, and quality assurance. Cross-disciplinary teams unite and collaborate in the development and delivery of software. Agile development is specific to the development team, its productivity, and its progress toward completing the project at hand. Development is completed in incremental sprints, and different teams manage software delivery, deployment, or ongoing maintenance of each release.

Manifestations

DevOps:

• Continuous integration
• Continuous deployment

Agile:

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Lean development
• DSDM
• Extreme programming
• Crystal
• Feature-driven development

Agile & DevOps Commonalities

Agile and DevOps both focus on speed, efficiency, and quality results throughout the software development lifecycle. They also focus on shorter release cycles. Both methodologies prioritize automation and collaboration over documentation. As projects progress, the risk level tends to decrease when using an Agile or DevOps approach, whereas risk tends to increase over time with other methods like Waterfall. If new business needs arise, both Agile and DevOps methodologies prepare organizations to be highly responsive by addressing business needs immediately. Businesses that use either approach also typically have tighter ownership of their respective projects.

How DevOps and Agile work together

Both DevOps and agile offer a structure and framework that can speed software delivery. You do not need to choose between DevOps or agile — instead, you can use both methodologies. Agile is strong on methods to organize work via Scrum or Kanban, and DevOps drives a broader culture of getting software delivered faster and more reliably.

Instead of deciding to go with DevOps or Agile, the question, actually, is how to practice both. So, when considering how to build a development cycle with the best of DevOps and agile, here are some examples of critical benefits and features that can help you create a highly optimized development environment.

From DevOps:

• Broader scope, wider reach

DevOps addresses all stages of software development and delivery, seeking to make releases faster and more reliable.

• Inter-department collaboration

A culture of reducing friction and fostering cross-functional teamwork can produce an improved work environment and more effective teams.

• Efficiency from automation

The DevOps practice seeks to find opportunities to create programmable processes and automate workflows where possible, driving efficiency.

From Agile:

• Workflow productivity tools

Kanban, Scrum, and other familiar planning methods from Agile help to track work, organize requirements, tasks, and progress.

• Incremental progress

Using sprints or other time-boxed production approaches helps create a consistent development cadence.

• Needs of the customer

Agile’s fail-fast, fail-early (were also the basis of DevOps, CD part, so that the customer gets the product as early as possible and as early as possible gave feedback) mentality helps provide a constant feedback loop, bringing customer expectations to the forefront.

With these insights in mind, it’s clear to see that both Agile and DevOps seek to bring the end-user value in a more efficient way — but from different angles. Agile focuses on making developers and development cycles more efficient, while DevOps brings the operations team into play to enable continuous integration and continuous delivery.