Companies strive to achieve the best products in the least amount of time. This competition has led to the creation of various methodologies and practices. In this article, we'll focus on the two main approaches to Software Development. These are DevOps and Agile Methodologies. We'll begin by looking into DevOps culture and what makes it essential. After that, we'll unfold its roles and tools. Then, we'll examine the Agile iterative approach and its key concepts and benefits. Last but not least, we'll see their similarities and differences. Let's dive in!
What is DevOps?
Development and Operations, for short DevOps, is a combination of practices developed in 2008. Its creators are Patrick Debois and Andrew Clay. These practices aim to connect Software Development and IT operations as a concept. With it, companies can deliver superior products with fewer roadblocks by fostering collaboration between development and operations teams. Also, the concepts of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment are key within DevOps. CI/CD means teams are constantly building, testing, and updating changes in the deployment process. As a result, it ensures a high-quality final product.
How Does DevOps Work?
The concept behind DevOps is quite simple. It combines development and operations in a single team. As a result, this methodology encourages Software Development team members to work on cross-functional skills. The DevOps process typically involves four main stages: planning, development, testing, and deployment. Let's see what each stage entails!
1. DevOps Planning: The first phase, planning, is where teams describe and define the features of the future-developed product. In this phase, they also organize and schedule product development tasks.
2. DevOps Developing: In the development stage, team members write, test, review, and deploy code into production. This phase entails Software Development and delivery processes.
3. DevOps Delivering: Once the software is developed, it moves to the third phase, delivery. Here, the software is deployed into production environments. This phase includes release management, deployment automation, and monitoring.
4. DevOps Operating. The operating phase is where the software is in use. During this phase, there's monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting within production environments. This approach to development is crucial to ensure the software performs optimally and quickly resolves issues.
DevOps environments create a culture of collaboration, communication, and continuous improvement by combining development and operation teams. This methodology encourages continuous collaboration among team members to work on cross-functional skills and to take ownership of the entire Software Development Lifecycle. The result is a faster, more reliable, and more efficient Software Development process.
What is DevSecOps?
DevSecOps is an approach that integrates security testing and protection into the DevOps model. The conventional security model checks and corrects security defects before software release. However, DevSecOps incorporates security measures into every step of the development process, resulting in faster delivery and building secure code simultaneously.
What does a DevOps Engineer do?
A DevOps engineer focuses on finding and implementing processes, methodologies, and tools. These apply to all needs that arise during the software development life cycle. For instance, it covers coding, deployment, maintenance, and updates. DevOps engineers work on unifying and combining development and operations tasks. Besides their technical knowledge, they usually specialize in leadership and team collaboration.
Why is DevOps Important?
Why is DevOps so important? In the past, DevOps teams used to work in separate lanes. In consequence, this process led to blind spots in implementation. If code gets kicked back and forth, there's usually no clear responsible party or course of action. Also, this can contribute to various issues and delays. Yet, when both teams work together, results are not only superior.
With collaboration throughout a whole life cycle, there are also fewer roadblocks. Nowadays, new software launches faster and faster. As a result, smooth and efficient processes are crucial to success. Further, DevOps has many other benefits. These include accelerated innovation, improved collaboration, reliability, security, and scalability.
What is Agile Methodology?
Agile is a Project Management and Software Development methodology. It's often used for cross-functional teams and focused on iterative development. As a result, Agile teams deliver work in small increments to deliver code to production. For example, they work in sprints or iterations, including continuous development and testing. This style might ring a bell from DevOps, which focuses on frequent releases to improve and deliver the product.
This method involves close collaboration between developers and stakeholders. Also, it offers regular deliveries, frequent inspections, self-organization, considers customer feedback, and great adaptability to change. Techs and trends are constantly shifting and evolving. That's why adaptability is essential in the development industry. Also, it's part of why Agile Software Development processes are continually gaining popularity.
What is the Agile Manifesto?
The Agile Manifesto identifies the values and principles of this methodology. It declares the four value focuses they highlighted through working with this approach of incremental deployments. In all these focuses, they present a hierarchy of priorities to handle an Agile approach. Here, individuals and interactions are over processes and tools, and working software is over comprehensive documentation. Likewise, collaboration with customers is over contract negotiation, and answering to change is over following a plan.
The Agile Manifesto, written by seventeen professionals in 2001, outlines twelve principles that emphasize simplicity, sustainability, and maintaining a consistent pace among sponsors, developers, and users. Adaptability to changes, even late in development, is also crucial. The delivery should occur frequently, from a couple of weeks to a few months, depending on continuous delivery. The primary goal of the Agile Manifesto is working software, which serves as its measurement of results.
What is Scrum in Agile?
Scrum is an Agile Framework—i.e., a specific set of practices. Its focus lies on delivering value in the least amount of time. Additionally, work gets organized through sprint planning, which tends to last around two weeks. Each sprint's ultimate goal is to reach within the specified time. Scrum is ideal for cross-functional teams. Also, it works best on projects divided into clearly defined increments until the needed product quality is reached. If you want to learn more about Scrum, you can do so here.
Why use Agile Methodology?
The advantages of Agile methods are plentiful. Yet, there are some main reasons why companies choose it. These include increasing performance, improving satisfaction, adaptability, and continuous testing. And, as we've seen, adaptability is essential in the dev industry. Also, Agile practices make it easier for teams to tackle changes during processes. As a result, this ensures that final products meet specific needs, even if it's a complex project. Other core values include rapid release, predictable costs, higher-quality standards, and project transparency.
Agile Methodology vs DevOps
As you might have noticed, Agile and DevOps approaches are similar tactical frameworks. They both have a common goal: getting high-quality products as quickly as possible. But what sets them apart? Let's go over some of their differences.
| |
DevOps |
Agile Methodology |
| Team |
DevOps teams are often large. It brings the development and operations teams —which tend to be apart— together. |
Agile involves smaller teams, with developers and product managers reacting to clients’ changing needs. |
| Focus |
The focus of DevOps lies in testing
and delivery. Also, its aim is to deliver end-to-end business solutions. |
It focuses on iterative development and constant changes. Besides, it relies on Software Development. |
| Process |
It works with hyper-releases and may have several of these every day. |
Here, the focus is on iterative development and constant changes. |
| Stages |
The DevOps process also includes delivery and maintenance. |
The Agile process starts with ideation and finishes with code completion. |
DevOps and Agile principles can also work together like their different hybrid models. Teams mix the best of both to deliver faster products while having user needs at the forefront. Yet, given cultural philosophy shifts, their implementation should be well thought out until becoming common practice. These methods apply mainly to larger companies.
Conclusion
DevOps and Agile are two excellent models to approach technical practices. Both are available to break down the barriers between development teams to work more efficiently and achieve better software products. Moreover, your choice will rely on composition and requirements. In some cases, combining the two might be the correct answer for your high-quality software development cycle. We hope we've given you a comprehensive approach to DevOps methodology and Agile development. Also, we expect to encourage you to look into these development strategies further to boost collaboration between developers!
