DevOps and Agile are both two modern software development methodologies leading to creating a framework for the production of a part of a product, a launch, or a release. Although both of them operate differently, they are often confused together.
DevOps primarily includes bringing together everyone involved in developing a software product and the operations involved. In contrast, Agile is a development methodology concerned with maintaining the productivity and software releases as per the change in needs. Despite being different, the combination of DevOps and Agile can lead to highly efficient and reliable outcomes.
Contents
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a methodology to bring together software development (Dev) and operations (Ops). It primarily aids in bridging the gap between software and development teams to make them function together to develop, test, and release software with high efficacy within a short period continuously. Considering this, seeking DevOps Certification training can significantly boost any software developer’s skill set and improve work proficiency.
Now let’s learn about the top features of DevOps and the essential tools used.
Top Features
- Broad Scope and Comprehensiveness: DevOps includes all the stages of software development aiming at speedy and reliable software delivery.
- Cross-departmental Collaboration: With DevOps, inter-departmental teams get a chance to collaborate, promoting a healthy working environment and effective teamwork.
- Improves automation and efficiency: Use of DevOps leads to the creation of programmable operations and automates the processes wherever and whenever possible, leading to higher efficiency.
Top Tools:
The top DevOps tools include Docker, Ansible, Jenkins, Puppet, Chef, Nagios, and Splunk. Of all the DevOps tools, Jenkins has gained considerable popularity because of its high plugin range of 1000+. Furthermore, Jenkins also allows its users to customize their CI/CD pipeline as per their requirements. Given the popularity of Jenkins, you can choose to do a Jenkins certification and have a rewarding career ahead.
What is Agile?
Agile is a software development methodology that prioritizes customer needs and brings alterations in its approach as per the customer’s changing demands. This way, Agile users ensure that they are on the right track.
Hence Agile works as a connector between the software development team and the customer to achieve efficient outcomes. The flexibility of Agile allows customers to introduce new features or alter the existing functions of a software. Using Agile, software development processes can be broken into smaller manageable parts to attain the desired finished product aligned with the business needs.
Top Features
- Wide range of tools: Agile software tools like Kanban, Scrum, Crystal, DSDM, and others aid in enhancing productivity, keeping track of progress, and help organize requirements and tasks.
- Persistent Progress: Agile approaches such as sprints and other time-boxed methods lead to consistent progress in software development.
- Prioritizes customer needs: The customers’ requirements are prioritized by modifying the software development process through constant input and customer feedback.
Top Tools
The top DevOps tools include Zephyr, Sprints, Bug Shooting, Snagit, JIRA, Soap UI, Jmeter, and Selenium.
How is DevOps different from Agile?
After understanding the concepts of DevOps and Agile methodologies, it’s essential to explore the differences between the two. DevOps as a software development tool is an amalgamation of cultures, practices, and techniques categorizing silos into different teams. In contrast, the Agile software development tool enhances feedback sharing between teams and customers. Although DevOps and Agile share a few similarities, they are not the same. And thus, it becomes essential to remove the ambiguity between the two and understand how they are different:
- DevOps includes pipeline optimization, while Agile methodology is more about project management.
- DevOps primarily focuses on the continuous integration and installation of the developed software, whereas Agile emphasizes flexibility in requirements and improvement of functions.
- Agile commonly aligns itself with Scrum, DaD, LeSS, SAFe; however, DevOps necessarily need not be applied to any specific framework as such.
- DevOps concentrates more on operational efficiency and automation, while Agile focuses on operations.
- Upon completing three stages of software development, i.e., development, testing, and deployment, Agile comes to a halt. In contrast, DevOps includes continuous operations and thus leads to constant monitoring and development of software.
- DevOps is mainly linked to cost-cutting, while Agile has got a connection with lean and waste minimization.
- DevOps combines IT and software development. In contrast, Agile focuses only on software development.
DevOps and Agile can be Practiced Together
Since both DevOps and Agile work towards fast and reliable software delivery, choosing one over the other is of no use. Instead, we can bring together both methodologies to maximize the benefits. Agile can organize the processes better, and DevOps leads to Agile leads to speedy and reliable software delivery. Hence, it can be beneficial for organizations to club both methodologies together to ramp up the software development process and meet the customer demands adequately.
Final Thoughts
Both DevOps and Agile have evolved as crucial contributors towards efficient software development. Despite sharing the common goals of working efficiently, faster, and making the customers happy, both differ from each other significantly. Keeping in mind the insights shared in this article, you must comprehend the concepts related to Agile and DevOps and the existing differences between the two.
