Introduction
Software Development is an intricate and complicated process. Business Gurus have therefore devised various models to bring lucidity to the process. The advantage this gives is that collaborators now have a common language to discuss work.
Two of these models are the Agile model and DevOps. The meaning of the word ‘agile’ is swift or versatile. It is an iterative process where development is carried out in collaborative sprints. DevOps on the other hand is a collusion of the teams of development and operations at a firm.
When the agile methodology gained widespread adoption in the early 2000s, it transformed software development. But within a few years, a critical oversight arose: the processes and requirements of the operations team who deployed and managed software products were left mostly untouched by the revolution. This led to the concept of DevOps.
According to the PR Newswire report, the global enterprise agile transformation services market size was valued at $27.6 billion in 2022, and is projected to reach $142 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 18.1% from 2023 to 2032
According to Allied Market Research, the global DevOps market size was valued at $ 6.78 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach $57.90 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 24.2% from 2021 to 2030.
Similarities between Agile and DevOps
Objectives: Both DevOps and Agile Methodologies focus on ultimately improving the software development and delivery process.They do this by promoting collaboration, efficiency and continuous improvement. Both use lean principles to streamline and maximize efficiency
Quality Assurance: Agile and DevOps both lay importance on testing throughout the development process. Unit tests, functional tests, performance tests, acceptance testing, and integration testing are some of the names of the tests performed in these methodologies
Continuous Improvement: The Agile Methodology uses retrospective practices for improvement, i.e. after each iteration, the team reflects on the positives and how they could improve deficiencies. Similarly, DevOps uses post-incident reviews and data reports to find possibilities of improvement
Differences between Agile and DevOps
Purpose: Teams use agile practices to efficiently respond to evolving customer needs and market demands in software development. DevOps breaks down silos and focuses on collaboration between the development and operations team.
Principles: The four main principles of agile methodology are – individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working software over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; reactive change over rigidly following a plan. On the other hand DevOps has five main principles – collaboration between development and operations teams for shared responsibility; automation tools and techniques to automate repetitive tasks, reduce errors, and increase efficiency; lean strategy to eliminate any processes that increase time to delivery; measurement of performance by collecting and analyzing data; sharing information and learnings across teams to improve overall performance and innovation
Practices: An agile team works in short iteration periods called sprints on smaller units of tasks called stories. Each sprint produces a new shippable increment of the software. On the other hand DevOps, focuses on continuous integration – it merges code into a shared repository for testing. Effort is made to make the delivery process continuous
Skills: Agile team members need to be adaptable and good communicators – this is because they need to communicate with customers and team members all the time. DevOps teams need more technical skills like security awareness, monitoring, automation knowledge and operations skills.
Conclusion
Many teams have found that Agile methodologies help them tremendously, while others have struggled to realize the benefits promised by this approach. DevOps can sometimes also fill the gaps for organizations that struggle with this to help them attain more success.
Ultimately the goals of Agile and DevOps are the same: to improve the speed and quality of software development, and it makes very little sense to talk about one without the other.