Agile vs DevOps: Key Differences

Sienna Roberts 25 April 2023

This blog will provide you with a detailed comparison of Agile vs DevOps based on a set of parameters, to help you make an informed choice. Read on!

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Agile vs DevOps: Key Differences

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Agile vs DevOps: Key Differences

Organisations must regularly adapt to the latest trends in the modern software development industry to survive. To get the most efficient end product in the least time, organisations tend to take Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) approaches. Two of the most popular SDLC approaches used in application development today are Agile and DevOps. Naturally, many people often compare Agile vs DevOps and enquire about the differences between the two.

According to digital.ai revealed that over one-third (36%) of product or application owners as well as 32% of engineering or R&D teams, have adopted Agile. On the other hand, an Atlassian So the organisations opting for either of the two approaches to facilitate efficient service shows how prevalent these are today.

In this blog you will know the difference between Agile vs DevOps how can they work together. Read on further to know more!

Table of Contents

1) What is Agile?

2) What is DevOps?

3) What is the difference between Agile and DevOps?

4) Agile and DevOps culture

5) How are Agile and DevOps similar?

6) Can Agile and DevOps go together?

7) Conclusion

What is Agile?

Agile is defined as a repetitive approach to Project Management and software development focusing on collaboration and feedback. It is a group of approaches and not just one single approach to development.

Agile consists of Scrum, extreme Programming (XP), and yesteryear practices The Agile methodology encourages continuous feedback, aiming to solve problems immediately. Though initially created to ease software development, Agile is now used in organisational management and project execution.

What is DevOps?

DevOps, is a combination of the words “Development” (Dev) and “Operations” (Ops). It combines the two teams to facilitate transparent and efficient software development. DevOps bridges the gap between different departments in an organisation and promotes collaboration to ensure faster service delivery.

The element of automation in DevOps helps it detect bugs early in the software development process. It also cuts down unnecessary expenditure. With the mainstream use of DevOps in recent years, both the quality as well as the speed of application delivery has improved. DevOps enhances customer satisfaction to a great extent and helps the organisation establish a reputation and gain a competitive edge in the market.

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What is the difference between Agile and DevOps?

This section will compare Agile and DevOps based on a number of parameters as follows:

Parameter	Agile	DevOps
Overview	Agile is a repetitive approach with a focus on collaboration and customer feedback.	DevOps is a framework or methodology combining development (Dev) and operations (Ops).
Objective	Agile aims to manage and ease the difficulty in complex projects.	DevOps aims to manage end-to-end engineering processes.
Focus	Agile works with a focus on constant change.	DevOps works with a focus on constant testing and delivery.
Implementation	Agile is implemented within a set of frameworks like Sprint, SAFe and Scrum.	DevOps primarily focuses on collaboration between teams in an organisation. Thus, it does not have a commonly accepted framework.
Training emphasis	Agile development focuses on training team members to have various skills in and around the same wavelength.	DevOps demarcates the skill set amongst the development and operation teams.
Team size	Agile is mainly meant for smaller team sizes. Because the smaller the number of people in a team, the faster they can deliver successful outcomes.	DevOps employs teams of relatively larger sizes.
Time duration	Agile development is achieved in units called “sprints”. The time for each “sprint” is much less than a month.	DevOps aims to meet deadlines and benchmarks. DevOps’ goal is to deliver code to production every day or after intervals of a few hours.
Feedback source	In Agile, the feedback is provided by the customer.	In DevOps, feedback is provided by the internal team within the organisation.
Target Area	Agile targets the area of software development.	DevOps aims to achieve an end-to-end business solution and fast delivery.
Shift-left Principles	The leverage shifts to the left.	The leverage shifts both to the left and to the right.
Emphasis	For developing software, Agile emphasises software development methodology. The Agile team do not intervene after the software is developed and released.	On the contrary, DevOps takes up software ready for release and deploys it reliably.
Cross-functional element	Agile has a cross-functional element, meaning that any team member is liable to do the needful for the project. With all the team members on the same page, there is an element of understanding in the team.	In DevOps, the development and operation teams are separate. Therefore, the communication factor is comparatively more complex than Agile.
Agenda of communication	Scrum is one of the most popular Agile software development methods. Scrum meetings are held every day.	Communication in DevOps is all around specifications and designing. The operation team must understand the software release and its implications to run the deployment process.
Priority of documentation	In Agile, the working system gets priority over complete documentation. While this is ideal for a flexible team, it can be detrimental if sent to another team for deployment.	In DevOps, process documentation takes top priority because the software is sent to the operation team for deployment. The element of automation in DevOps cuts down the impact of inadequate documentation.
Emphasis of automation	Agile does not emphasise automation.	As for DevOps, automation is the primary goal, and the framework tries to achieve maximum efficiency during software deployment.
Gap addressed	Agile addresses the gap between customer needs and testing teams.	DevOps, on the other hand, addresses the gap between development, testing, and operations.
Focus on readiness	Agile puts its focus on functional and non-functional readiness.	DevOps focuses on operational readiness.
Importance	For Agile, software development is of top importance.	For DevOps, development, testing and implementation are all equally important.
Quality	Agile produces better-quality of application suites and is adaptable during the project life cycle.	Early bug removal in DevOps helps it achieve higher quality in software development.
Tools	Some common Agile tools are JIRA, Bugzilla and Kanboard.	Some common DevOps tools are Puppet, Chef, TeamCity, OpenStack and AWS.
Limitations	Agile demands maximum productivity, which is hard to achieve consistently.	DevOps needs development and production environments to streamline the working process.
Benefits	The development cycle in Agile is shorter, and agile also offers a better chance of detecting defects.	DevOps is known to support Agile’s release cycle.

Agile and DevOps culture

The culture that defines Agile and DevOps can be divided into several categories. Some of these categories are:

a) Collaboration

b) Communication

c) Adaptability

d) Transparency

e) Empowerment

Let us now look how some of these cultures defines one from the other:

Agile Culture:

a) Collaboration: It emphasise teams from various departments to collaborate closely.

b) Communication: When several teams collaborate, there has to be effective communication to carry out the tasks smoothly. These teams can comprise of developers, testers, designers, etc.

c) Adaptability: In this culture, there are a lot of dynamic situations that the employees need to adapt. Strong adaptability helps to be more responsive towards any evolving situations.

d) Transparency: The transparency in projects when they are in progress or even after getting developed, shows the kind of culture that is followed in Agile.

e) Empowerment: Taking responsibility and being accountable for the projects and tasks are all empowering activities which allows individuals to follow up through their actions.

Now you know the Agile culture. Let us now highlight the DevOps culture:

a) Collaboration: DevOps breaks down the structure of the organisations and allows for seamless collaboration between different employees.

b) Communication: The team of DevOps helps in taking the entire responsibility for projects through effective communication and the results are impeccable.

c) Automation: To help speed up processes, DevOps encourages for automation on manual processes, so that the pipelines running efficiency is increased. This automation also helps in reducing errors and enhances efficiency.

d) Reliability: The major focus of DevOps is building strong reliability, so that there are faster discoveries of errors and efficient recovery from failures.

e) Empowerment: Like Agile, DevOps has a strong work culture which helps in increasing the enthusiasm towards learning new things and implementing them. This experimentation empowers DevOps to give more enhanced outputs.

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How are Agile and DevOps similar?

Even though there may be lots of differences between them, there are some points where Agile and DevOps are quite alike:

1) Collaboration: Both Agile and DevOps encourages cross-functional activities. These activities help in ensuring a smooth flow from the beginning to the end.

2) User centric: Both Agile and DevOps, when they begin any project, their main target is to achieve complete user satisfaction. All the developments and changes that are undertaken by them are done keeping the users in mind.

3) Adatability: As both strive towards achieving user satisfaction, they encourage for complete adaptability towards any new advancement sin projects or tasks. The Agile teams are asked to monitor their progress regularly. Similary, the Devops team also encourages to monitor any feedback loops that will help in identifying any areas for improvement.

4) Accountability: Both Agile and DevOps promote to take accountability and responsibility for any product’s lifecycle. Whether it be Agile collectively monitoring the product development process or the DevOps team looking into the production cycle from the beginning to the end.

Can Agile and DevOps work together?

Though the frameworks are different, it must be noted that both Agile and DevOps can work together. The former focuses on an iterative approach to development, and the latter brings Development and Operations practices together – which are typically isolated.

However, the ultimate goal of each one is to create further collaboration. The Agile methodology acts as a motivator for developing a DevOps culture. Using both Agile and DevOps, it will help you to maintain the necessary goals. Using both Agile and DevOps, it helps the teams to process and integrated codes seamlessly. Using Agile’s regular feedback from stakeholders and DevOps’ feedback loops, it can be easy for you to quickly identify the errors and fix the necessary issues.

Conclusion

While Agile vs DevOps is a prevalent discussion, they are both software development methodologies adopted by organisations to achieve the best results quickly and efficiently. In both frameworks improve teamwork and promote collaboration amongst software developers in an organisation. They eradicate the problems that arise from departments working in isolation and work towards efficient and synchronised software development.

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