What is DevOps?
DevOps is a software development method which focuses on communication, integration, and collaboration among IT professionals to enables rapid deployment of products.
DevOps is a culture that promotes collaboration between Development and Operations Team. This allows deploying code to production faster and in an automated way. It helps to increases an organization's speed to deliver application and services. It can be defined as an alignment of development and IT operation.
What is Agile?
Agile Methodology involves continuous iteration of development and testing in the SDLC process. This software development method emphasizes on iterative, incremental, and evolutionary development.
Agile development process breaks the product into smaller pieces and integrates them for final testing. It can be implemented in many ways, including scrum, kanban, scrum, XP, etc.
Agile Vs. DevOps
Stakeholders and communication chain in a typical IT process.
Agile addresses gaps in Customer and Developer communications
DevOps addresses gaps in Developer and IT Operations communications
Difference Between Agile and DevOps
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Parameter
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Agile
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DevOps
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What is it?
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Agile refers to an
iterative approach which focuses on collaboration, customer feedback, and
small, rapid releases.
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DevOps is considered
a practice of bringing development and operations teams together.
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Purpose
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Agile helps to
manage complex projects.
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DevOps central
concept is to manage end-to-end engineering processes.
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Task
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Agile process
focusses on constant changes.
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DevOps focuses on
constant testing and delivery.
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Implementation
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Agile method can be
implemented within a range of tactical frameworks like a sprint, safe and
scrum.
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The primary goal of
DevOps is to focus on collaboration, so it doesn't have any commonly accepted
framework.
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Team skill set
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Agile development
emphasizes training all team members to have a wide variety of similar and
equal skills.
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DevOps divides and
spreads the skill set between the development and operation teams.
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Team size
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Small Team is at the
core of Agile. As smaller is the team, the fewer people on it, the faster
they can move.
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Relatively larger
team size as it involves all the stack holders.
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Duration
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Agile development is
managed in units of "sprints." This time is much less than a month
for each sprint.
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DevOps strives for
deadlines and benchmarks with major releases. The ideal goal is to deliver
code to production DAILY or every few hours.
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Feedback
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Feedback is given by
the customer.
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Feedback comes from
the internal team.
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Target Areas
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Software Development
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End-to-end business
solution and fast delivery.
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Shift-Left
Principles
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Leverage shift-left
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Leverage both shifts
left and right.
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Emphasis
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Agile emphasizes on
software development methodology for developing software. When the software
is developed and released, the agile team will not care what happens to it.
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DevOps is all about
taking software which is ready for release and deploying it in a reliable and
secure manner.
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Cross-functional
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Any team member
should be able to do what's required for the progress of the project. Also,
when each team member can perform every job, it increases understanding and
bonding between them.
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In DevOps, development
teams and operational teams are separate. So, communication is quite complex.
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Communication
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Scrum is most common
methods of implementing Agile software development. Daily scrum meeting is
carried out.
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DevOps
communications involve specs and design documents. It's essential for the
operational team to fully understand the software release and its
hardware/network implications for adequately running the deployment process.
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Documentation
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Agile method is to
give priority to the working system over complete documentation. It is ideal
when you're flexible and responsive. However, it can hurt when you're trying
to turn things over to another team for deployment.
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In the DevOps,
process documentation is foremost because it will send the software to the
operational team for deployment. Automation minimizes the impact of
insufficient documentation. However, in the development of complex software,
it's difficult to transfer all the knowledge required.
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Automation
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Agile doesn't
emphasize on automation. Though it helps.
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Automation is the
primary goal of DevOps. It works on the principle to maximize efficiency when
deploying software.
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Goal
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It addresses the gap
between customer need and development & testing teams.
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It addresses the gap
between development + testing and Ops.
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Focus
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It focuses on
functional and non-function readiness.
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It focuses more on
operational and business readiness.
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Importance
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Developing software
is inherent to Agile.
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Developing, testing
and implementation all are equally important.
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Speed vs. Risk
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Teams using Agile
support rapid change, and a robust application structure.
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In the DevOps
method, the teams must make sure that the changes which are made to the
architecture never develop a risk to the entire project.
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Quality
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Agile produces
better applications suites with the desired requirements. It can easily adapt
according to the changes made on time, during the project life.
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DevOps, along with
automation and early bug removal, contributes to creating better quality.
Developers need to follow Coding and Architectural best practices to maintain
quality standards.
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Tools used
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JIRA, Bugzilla,
Kanboard are some popular Agile tools.
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Puppet, Chef,
TeamCity OpenStack, AWS are popular DevOps tools.
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Challenges
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The agile method
needs teams to be more productive which is difficult to match every time.
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DevOps process needs
to development, testing and production environments to streamline work.
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Advantage
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Agile offers shorter
development cycle and improved defect detection.
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DevOps supports
Agile's release cycle.
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Conclusion:
- DevOps is a software development method which focuses on communication, integration, and collaboration among IT professionals.
- Agile software development method emphasis on iterative, incremental, and evolutionary development.
- Agile refers to an iterative approach which focuses on collaboration, customer feedback, and small, rapid releases.
- DevOps consider as a practice of bringing development and operations teams together.
- Agile method is to give priority to the working system over complete documentation. It is ideal when you're flexible and responsive.
- In the DevOps, process documentation is foremost because it will send the software to the operational team for deployment.
Bikesh Srivastava
DevOps
