Bringing Agile and DevOps together
Agile and DevOps work best when they work in tandem. An approach that combines Agile and DevOps helps pave the way for flexible new tools, capabilities, and security measures. Here’s how Agile DevOps contributes to a stronger, more efficient development flow overall:
- Cross-functional teams. Agile DevOps teams are entirely cross-functional, consisting of people from different areas of expertise, including developers and product managers, as well as testers, operations engineers, and more. By bringing together a variety of different skillsets, cross-functional teams can achieve their common goals faster.
- Continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD). CI/CD, or continuous integration and deployment, helps automates testing and deployment so that teams can ship faster with greater reliability and accuracy. By combining the two to form a CI/CD pipeline, Agile DevOps teams can build automated workflows that significantly minimize the amount of manual testing that needs to be performed.
- Feedback loops. Agile stresses the importance of open and continuous feedback, which is why Agile DevOps incorporates feedback loop systems throughout the SDLC so that all teams stay updated and informed. Automation tools also help optimize feedback loops by streamlining parts of the development lifecycle, in turn reducing unnecessary interactions among teammates.y
- Stronger security. By embedding security practices into the development process, and by baking security automations into the SDLC, Agile DevOps takes on a shift-left approach to security, which helps teams fix vulnerabilities faster—and strengthens security overall.
The benefits of Agile DevOps for SMBs
Whether you’re an enterprise-level organization or an SMB, the competitive advantages of bringing Agile and DevOps together are myriad:
- Thanks to Agile, you’ll ship sooner, deliver frequently, and enjoy a faster time-to-market than other traditional models.
- You’ll end up with a high-quality product, leading to customer satisfaction.
- You’ll foster meaningful collaboration among formerly siloed groups.
- Thanks to automated testing, you’ll experience reduced risks and errors when deploying code.
- You’ll have the opportunity to form collaborative, cross-functional teams.
- Your team will develop the ability to adapt and respond quickly to change.
- Your per-project costs will decrease, resulting in greater cost-efficiency.
- Customers receive more updates at an expedited rate, leading to overall satisfaction.
- By making reliable, data-driven decisions, you’ll have the opportunity to foster a data-driven culture in your organization.
- You’ll gain the ability to flexibly scale up and down to suit your project’s needs.
Key considerations when combining Agile and DevOps
As you move forward with potentially bringing Agile and DevOps together, you’ll want to consider the following big-picture questions:
- What are your organization’s shared objectives and goals?
- What are the specific KPIs you’d like to meet? Are there any other metrics to consider?
- What does your organizational culture look like and how can it best facilitate an Agile DevOps approach to development?
- Will you have adequate support from leadership to help drive this new initiative?
- How will you design and optimize your team’s workflow so that they stay productive and motivated?
- How will you train and educate your team so that they understand and feel empowered by Agile DevOps practices?
- How will you ensure that every release, no matter how small, comes with adequate documentation?
- How will you incorporate security, compliance, and governance practices into your workflow?
- How will you incorporate change management into your workflow?
- What are some of the processes you’ll incorporate to ensure proper testing and quality assurance?
- Which tools, platforms, and solutions will you use?
Get started with Agile DevOps
Agile DevOps encourages fast, incremental updates to products throughout the entire SDLC, leading to lower costs, more productive teams, and happier customers. It’s the optimal framework for SMBs, and it comes in many forms. There are now dozens of Agile DevOps tools and solutions to choose from, which means that as you explore your options, you’ll want to see how one solution compares to the rest.
Frequently asked questions
How do Agile and DevOps interrelate?
Agile and DevOps share a common goal: to build better software faster. Agile encourages fast, frequent updates to products and emphasizes the importance of responding to change quickly and iteratively. DevOps goes beyond the developers and extends this mindset to the operations teams, leading to new and innovative tools and automation features.
What are the key differences between DevOps and Agile?
The original Agile methodology focuses primarily on the development phase of a project. DevOps considers the entire software development lifecycle.
Why is Agile important in DevOps?
Agile principles complement DevOps by encouraging small, continuous updates and feedback cycles throughout the entire software development lifecycle. This paves the way for CI/CD automations, security automations, and a more cohesive development process overall.
Why should businesses combine Agile and DevOps?
Agile and DevOps work best when they work together. A combined Agile DevOps approach makes for flexible, cross-functional teams, paves the way for new automations, and strengthens quality and security overall.
Does DevOps replace Agile?
No. Agile is a methodology that emphasizes fast, frequent updates. DevOps extends that methodology and applies it to the entire software development lifecycle. The two are complementary and often go hand in hand.
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