DevOps vs. Agile – What is the Difference?

You must have heard about developers discussing software development methodologies before working on any project.

There are various development approaches available for every project. However, Agile and DevOps are the two most popular them.

While planning to craft medium and large-scale projects, a session over DevOps vs. Agile is a must between the project team. Both offer flexible and vigorous structures, promising to achieve the milestones seamlessly.

Now, you must be thinking, if both are scalable, then why is there a debate about selecting one of them.

So, before making any final decision, let’s look at both of them and enhance our knowledge to spick out an appropriate mechanism for fabricating our software.

A Brief Analysis: Introduction, Processes, and Principles

Agile Development Methodology

From the vast classification of software development methodologies, Agile is the most scalable development approach, leveraging developers to fulfill dynamic client requirements.

Since its introduction in the late 2000s, the software creation industry has got its pace and has never faced extensive complexities in fabricating business solutions.

The primary aim of creating an Agile mechanism was to eliminate the complexities of the Waterfall methodology, but due to its flexible structure, it became the most promising development approach. It comprises all the basics stages of a software development lifecycle.

However, the main reason behind its extensive utilization is its development stage, which follows small iterations and maintains a healthy relationship with stakeholders.

In addition, it assures a quality product, aligning with stakeholder demands and organizational policies.

Figure 1 https://digitaltreed.com/influencer/popular-tool-used-in-agile-software-development/

Agile offers a wide variety of development approaches, as listed below:

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Extreme Programming(XP)
• Lean Development
• Feature-Driven
• Crystal

These Agile approaches provide unique features, shorten the time-to-market, and enable the developers to embed every essential component.

Let’s have a look at the fundamental Agile functionality.

The overall project gets divided into five phases when you follow the Agile methodology.

Stage 1: Planning

The main objective of this phase is to collect all the vital information about the project for generating the scope, final goal, schedule, and budget.

Also, creating a project team and assigning duties to them is a part of it.

Once you complete all these tasks, you can move your project to stage two of Agile.

Stage 2: Developing

At this phase, the iteration of design, development, and unit testing comes into the role.

The team creates a design aligning with user requirements, crafts the application, and developers test it on their behalf. If the application works smoothly and there are no new client demands, it gets escalated further.

Otherwise, the team executes all three processes (design, develop and test) until it doesn’t meet all the requisites.

Stage 3: Testing

Once the development stage is over, testers come into action to find the vulnerable loopholes in the application.

The team re-iterates the development phase if any error is there. And, if the functioning complies with KPIs, the software is sent to the operations team.

Stage 4: Delivery and Deployment

While at this stage, the operations team handles all the operations.

The main objective of the engineers is to configure the application and deploy the application to the end-users. Also, the team focuses on implementing security mechanisms to maintain data integrity and confidentiality between client and server systems.

Now, all application procedures are in the production environment.

Stage 5: Maintenance

It is the last phase of Agile methodology, whose primary motive is to constantly monitor the performance and modify it with the latest framework updates.

In addition, it is an ongoing process, and the organization has to continue it until they are utilizing their business solution to execute daily procedures.

DevOps Development Methodology

DevOps methodology combines development and operations to optimize communication, productivity, and collaboration between project teams.

According to Agile methodology guidelines, the operations team comes into focus after the development stage.

Whereas, in DevOps, both the teams work together from the initial stages.

It aids the engineers in completing large projects in a smaller period, assuring the application’s quality, security, and working.

If you use Agile, the deployment stage comes only at once, but it’s not the case with DevOps. Every module, component, and API consistently gets deployed in the production environment in a DevOps-based project.

Figure 2https://www.techtrainees.com/learn-appropriate-devops-process-to-get-better-results/

Primarily, DevOps is based on 7C principles as follows:

1. Controlling Version

With DevOps, you can assure that only the tested and verified code is present in the master repository.

Whenever a developer sends a merge request, the tester receives the code and validates it. If it passes the test, the master directory gets updated with it.

2. Continuous Integration

All the developers in the team have access to the central repository for sending every update directly to it.

As a result, all the team members quickly integrate essential components and discover and resolve potential errors, exceptions, and bugs.

3. Continuous Delivery

All the application modifications get reflected simultaneously as integration and code merging is a continuous procedure.

It helps prevent the delay in deployment and enhances the release of a more stable and alluring version, covering edge-to-edge customer needs.

4. Continuous Deployment

It leverages to deploy as you develop. Whether it is a minor change or a major one, you will have a real-time view of the application.

In addition, you also automate the tasks in DevOps for speeding up the overall development and deployment process. Various tools, such as Octopus Deploy, AWS CodeDeploy, etc., are available for such purposes.

5. Continuous Testing

For uploading only relevant code in the repository, team members frequently test all the application elements.

It prevents the probability of vulnerable loopholes, glitches, errors, and bugs in the production ecosystem.

6. Continuous Operations

In Agile, the Operation team is only working at the deployment stage. But, here in DevOps, developers are writing, testing, verifying, and deploying the code at once.

Due to this, the operations team is always active, monitoring the current application status and maintaining its performance with every new release and update.

7. Consistent Collaboration

At every stage, the operations team persistently works with the developers.

Both are aware of the current project progress and collaborate to reduce complexities, resolve issues, and make the process seamless, supporting end-to-end responsibilities.

Also, it helps to precisely understand the project purpose and move each codebase efficiently and effectively as per the customer feedback.

Figure 3 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1233917/software-development-methodologies-practiced/

Additionally, the latest statistics show that, with modern features, DevOps has become the leading development methodology, holding 35.9% globally. Agile is behind it with 31.8%.

The Principle Comparison: DevOps vs. Agile

Development Speed

Most projects have a shorter time to market, and every organization demands a business solution as soon as possible.

For faster application development and deployment, DevOps will be the perfect choice for you, as it enables you to write, test, verify and deploy code simultaneously.

On the other hand, Agile doesn’t offer such functionality, and there is always a probability of increasing the project schedule due to frequent dynamic client requirements.

Team Size

Team Size directly impacts the budget of any project.

Agile can be your reliable approach for fabricating robust business software if you have modifying needs and a limited budget. In Agile, small teams can effortlessly work to craft the application.

In addition, once you are moving onto the next Agile phase, you can put the current team on hold or employ only vital people.

For instance, when the application is in the testing phase, you can employ only one or two developers to remove the errors and fix bugs. And release the rest of the development team.

DevOps requires development, testing, and operations teams to work together at every stage. It leads to an increase in the project budget, as involving more people requires more finances.

Project Schedule

While using Agile, overall projects get divided into small iterations. The goal of each iteration is to fulfill the business requirements.

Once the engineers complete a sprint, they analyze the further operations and start another iteration to meet them. With this, agile projects take more time to discharge fully.

Besides, DevOps leverages multiple teams to collaborate from the initial project stage and ensure achieving goals in a shorter period. In addition, there are various automated tools available for DevOps projects, aiding in robotizing the core operations.

Project Compatibility

Every project has its scope and technical and business requisites, and choosing a suitable development methodology is the most crucial task.

If you have to build a large-scale application, both Agile and DevOps can help you and provide you with the fundamental structure to complete it within time and cost constraints.

Which is better for your project?

DevOps and Agile both can be a perfect fit for furnishing business applications.

However, DevOps is an advanced version of Agile, extending its functionality by offering consistent deployment as you develop. Also, it allows the project team to use modern tools for automating the essential procedures.

If you are looking for a reliable, robust, and effortless development approach for your creating your software, then you must verify the requirements with features and drawbacks of both of them.