Devops and Agile are two project management and software development methods. Their common objective is to improve productivity.
The best thing for a company is to take advantage of these two methods to deliver faster, more efficient work. What are the advantages and differences between these two methods?
Devops: what is it?
The term DevOps refers to a practice that enables a single IT team to implement and manage the entire application development cycle, from testing and development to deployment and monitoring. DevOps system administrators link the operations and development teams.
The team responsible for coding is also responsible for maintaining the programming once it is in production. This means that the traditionally separate development and operations teams work together to improve software releases.
The aim of the DevOps model is to develop a system more quickly, while providing features and updates on a regular basis, according to the needs of the business.
DevOps principles focus on six continuous improvement objectives: continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous testing, continuous deployment, continuous operations and continuous collaboration. Combining two distinct departments and processes (development and operations) and bringing them closer together leads to transparency and increased focus on automated testing.
Optimising DevOps: the CALMS principle
CALMS, the acronym for Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement and Sharing, is particularly useful for analysing an organisation’s DevOps structure and its usefulness. If these 5 points are respected, DevOps will be fully functional.
- Culture: Improving your company’s technology should meet a specific business need, rather than just being an investment for no predefined reason. This principle, which has been in place for several years now, applies to the way in which the “culture” part of CALMS supports the way in which the expected return on investment, associated with the automation of a process, must be defended within the DevOps team.
- Automation: automating the process means succeeding in developing continuous delivery but also achieving total automation of repetitive tasks.
- Lean: this means focusing on optimisation by identifying tasks that do or do not create value. Automation is an asset here.
- Measurement: putting in place performance indicators to identify areas for improvement and those that are working well, so that business and technical objectives can be maintained.
- Sharing: sharing with your teams to find out where the difficulties and failures lie, just as much as the performances and successes.
The Agile method: what is it?
The Agile method, developed in the Agile Manifesto, is an iterative approach to software development and a form of project management that focuses on collaboration between different teams. The aim is to find solutions that take account of customer feedback in order to improve the quality and speed of the software.
Development under the Agile methodology is broken down into smaller units of time called “sprints”, which last between two weeks and a month. The Agile method focuses on deployment and progressive integration of each sprint for final testing. The tools that can be used are Kanban Board, Scrum, XP or Active Collab. The Agile method is based on four principles:
- Focus on people and interactions rather than tools. It is common practice to give priority to acquiring the best possible tools in order to create software. However, the best tools are not necessarily adequate when used by the wrong teams.
- The objective is therefore to have the right team with the right profiles, so that together they can build an environment that is conducive to resolving the problems that arise as the process unfolds. Focus on functional software rather than too much documentation.
- In the past, software teams spent a lot of time documenting processes. Today, the Agile method prioritises programming and delivering software to customers over documentation.
- Prioritise collaboration with the customer rather than contract negotiation.
- Before the Agile method, a great deal of thought was given to negotiating contracts and particularly general terms and conditions, which led to disagreement over the product used by end users, which often differed from what was stipulated in the contract.
- The Agile method now favours continuous collaboration to ensure the success of a project.
Responding to demand rather than following predefined guidelines. Over the last few years, the dynamic nature of change has created a need for speed and a constant desire to evolve. So the aim of IT teams is to be flexible and adaptable. The Agile method therefore consists of knowing how to question projects in progress in order to adapt them as best as possible.
DevOps vs Agile: the differences
| Differences | DevOps | Agile Method |
| Company Culture | Collaboration between development and operations teams always with a focus on productivity | Gradual changes through continuous development |
| Main Objective | Continuous integration and rapid delivery with end-to-end management | Progressive deployment in complex projects |
| Integration and Deployment | Responsible for deploying securely, uses pre-built, ready-to-use software | Responsible for developing and launching software but not involved in deployment |
| Team Skills and Size | Scalable teams with diverse skills | Small teams with targeted and advanced skills |
| Communication Channels | DevOps communication is through specifications and design documents | Use of Scrum for progressing various tasks through meetings organized by the Scrum Master |
Conclusion
These two methods therefore meet the same objective of productivity and optimisation. However, they do not use the same processes and do not achieve the same goals. The greatest benefit is therefore to integrate these two methods into your corporate culture. To find out more, take a look at our Data Science training catalogue.
