Modern software developers use Agile and DevOps to launch software in the market. These are two different methodologies to bring software to the market more efficiently. Though the purpose of these two methodologies is the same, there are significant contrasts between them. Many companies want to employ Agile and DevOps to launch and maintain their products, but they become confused. They think which one will be appropriate for their company so let’s clear this confusion. In this article, we will be going to review the Agile Vs DevOps arguments and what differences there are between the two.
History of Software Development
Today’s era is all about AI, ML, Blockchain, Deep learning and much more but here is the question, how did we go from room size calculator to Artificial intelligence? Since the beginning of the computer era, one must need software to develop something for the internet world. Let’s say it is not possible to create a Minecraft hosting server without Minecraft gaming software. Thus, it is important to understand the history of software and programming.
- In mid 1830s, an English mathematician, Charles Babbage created first automatic digital computer.
- In 1833, Ada Lovelace, first created a programming language with Charles Babbage on his early mechanical computer.
- In 1920, IBM had created the first accounting machine where you put the punch card in and accounts balance out.
- In 1930, Alan Turing created a concept of programming by breaking big problems into small ones.
- In 1949, Assembly Language which is a low-level programming language was created to simplify the language of machine code.
- In 1964, BASIC or Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code was created.
- In 1972, C was developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs and is considered as the first programming language.
Till 1990s: Languages
- 1980 – C++ (as C with classes, renamed in 1983)
- 1983 – Ada
- 1984 – Common Lisp
- 1984 – MATLAB
- 1984 – dBase III, dBase III Plus (Clipper and FoxPro as FoxBASE, later developing into Visual FoxPro)
- 1985 – Eiffel
- 1986 – Objective-C
- 1986 – LabVIEW (Visual Programming Language)
- 1986 – Erlang
- 1987 – Perl
- 1988 – Tcl
- 1988 – Wolfram Language (as part of Mathematica, only got a separate name in June 2013)
- 1989 – FL (Backus)
1990s: The Internet age
- 1990 – Haskell
- 1990 – Python
- 1991 – Visual Basic
- 1993 – Lua
- 1993 – R
- 1994 – CLOS (part of ANSI Common Lisp)
- 1995 – Ruby
- 1995 – Ada 95
- 1995 – Java
- 1995 – Delphi (Object Pascal)
- 1995 – JavaScript
- 1995 – PHP
- 1997 – Rebol
Current Trend
- 2000 – ActionScript
- 2001 – C#
- 2001 – D
- 2002 – Scratch
- 2003 – Groovy
- 2003 – Scala
- 2005 – F#
- 2006 – PowerShell
- 2007 – Clojure
- 2008 – Nim
- 2009 – Go
- 2010 – Rust
- 2011 – Dart
- 2011 – Kotlin
- 2011 – Elixir
- 2012 – Julia
- 2012 – TypeScript
- 2014 – Swift
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a software development methodology. It enables opportunities among IT professionals to communicate and collaborate with each other for product development and operations efficiently. A single team can manage the entire lifecycle of applications from development to deployment and maintenance as well.
According to Atlassian and CITE Research’s survey, 99% of developers & IT decision-makers think that DevOps has kept a positive impact on their company while 85% of them have faced problems implementing DevOps. [Source]
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Pros
- Enable super-fast product development and deployment
- Easy to maintain the life-cycle of product development.
- Easy to frequent product updates.
- Enhance communication and collaboration among team members.
- Enhanced Efficiency
- Efficient product maintenance
- Enhance flexibility
Cons
- It necessitates a proper mindset throughout the company.
- Lack of skills in employees.
- Outsourcing DevOps operations reduced business security.
- Dealing with the legacy system is difficult.
- Has organizational and technical challenges.
What Is Agile?
Agile is a method of delivery that is related to lean production. The fundamentals of agile are building while dealing with the facts of changing needs and requirements. Adaptability is a core characteristic of agile, bridging the gap between the development team and the end-user by prioritizing the needs of users. According to some surveys, it reveals that 71% of companies use Agile development and 98% of them get positive output from Agile development. [Source]
Pros
- It gives flexibility in product development.
- Super-fast product development and deployment.
- Better communication among team members.
Cons
- It is hard to predict.
- Lack of skilled employees.
- It is hard to predict.
Agile vs DevOps – Comparison Table Key Differences
Let’s look at some of the key differences between Agile and DevOps.
| Comparison Parameters | Agile | DevOps |
| Purpose | The primary purpose of Agile is to manage complex projects. | The primary purpose of DevOps is to handle end to end engineering process. |
| Task | Agile emphasizes constant changes. | DevOps emphasizes constant testing and delivery. |
| Focus | Agile focuses on functional and non-functional readiness. | DevOps focuses more on operational and business readiness. |
| Implementation | The agile technique can be used in a variety of tactical frameworks, including sprints, safes, and scrums. | Because the fundamental purpose of DevOps is to emphasize collaboration, there is no widely acknowledged framework. |
| Target areas | Software development. | End to End business solution and quick delivery. |
| Team size | Small | Large |
| Team skill set | Agile development emphasizes educating all team members. | DevOps emphasize dividing the skill set between development and operation teams. |
| Speed of Production | “Sprints” are used to manage agile development. Each sprint will probably take less than a month. | When it comes to large releases, DevOps aims for timetables and benchmarks. The ideal goal is to push code to production every few hours or every day.
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| Feedback | Feedback comes from the customer. | Feedback comes from the internal team members. |
| Automation | Automation is not the focus of Agile. | Automation is the primary focus of DevOps. |
| Communication | In Agile, Scrum is a popular framework. Team members can conduct meetings in Scrum daily. | Specs and design papers are part of the DevOps communications process. |
| Documentation | The agile technique prioritizes the working system above full documentation. | Process documentation is critical in DevOps since it is used to transfer software to the operational team for deployment. |
Is DevOps Better Than Agile?
The purpose of DevOps and Agile is to accelerate software development. Instead of choosing between them, these can be used parallelly.
When do Agile and DevOps work together?
The best practice is to use Agile and DevOps together. DevOps gives reliability, faster release, inter-department collaboration, and automation. On the other hand, Agile provides productive workflow, incremental progress, and customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Agile Vs Devops is a debate that will continue. By keeping everything in mind, the goal of Agile and DevOps is the same, which is to bring end-value in a more efficient way. These two tools are equally helpful for efficient workflow. In the IT process, there are 3 major components, Customer (software requirement), Developer + tester, Operation + IT Infrastructure. Agile focuses on addressing gaps between Customer and Developer whereas DevOps overcome gaps in Developer and IT Operations.
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